Cases illustrative of the contagious nature of puerperal fever, and its intimate connection with erysipelatous and phlebitic inflammation / by Alexander Peddie.

  • Peddie, Alexander, 1810-1907.
Date:
[1846?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cases illustrative of the contagious nature of puerperal fever, and its intimate connection with erysipelatous and phlebitic inflammation / by Alexander Peddie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    who have ever met with it acknowledge) to the appliances of art, however varied and judicious they may be.* On such topics, however, 1 shall not enter, but pass on to show, in a very brief narrative, the singular connection, or at least association, which these cases had with erysipelas and phlebitis, an alliance which has been frequently pointed out by writers on this subject.-f* When the first case of puerperal fever happened in my practice, I was visiting a gentleman twice daily with erysipelas, spreading from sinuses which surrounded the right hip joint, and had their origin from a mismanaged bubo and a much impaired constitu- tion. This case was the most malignant one of the kind I ever witnessed, proving fatal on the 16th September, after his body had for some time become deeply jaundiced, and large purulent deposits, attended with considerable emphysema, had formed in the right knee and left shoulder joints, as also among the muscles of the right forearm. After applying the usual dressings to this case, there being a very copious discharge of dark-coloured foetid mat- ter from the sinuses, I was on every occasion most careful in at- tending to ablutions, for the sake of personal comfort, not from the remotest idea of averting bad. consequences from those with whom I might come in contact; and it was only the progress of events which suggested to my mind the probable relation which this malignant case bore to the subsequent disastrous cases in the accouchement chamber; and after this idea occurred, and was stated to some medical friends, it was confirmed by cases very si- milar in many respects, which I find related in an interesting, able, and candid paper, by Mr Storr of Doncaster,;]: and which happened both in his own practice and in that of others. During attendance on this individual I delivered Cases L, II., and HI. But in order to show what weight is to be attached to evidence of an animal poison being conveyed from this case of gangrenovis erysipelas to the labour cases, it is proper to mention that I delivered another patient on the same morning as Case I., and that I continued to visit her from day to day until the 10th of the month. While attending Case III. I had only another pa- tient affected with erysipelas, but of a mild character, in the case of • It may appear presumptuous to recommend any course of treatment in a dis- ease which, as tar as we know, has always been fatal, &c. Locock, Lib. Pract. Med., vol. i. p. .301. t Gordon of Aberdeen. Gooch, Nunnely ; and vide also the excellent paper of Mr Sidcy. in the Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. 18;i9, p. 138. X Mr Stort had a long list of fatal puerperal fever cases, from the dressing of a case of gangrenous erysipelas with subsequent abscesses. He also relates that Mr Reedal of Sheffield had live fatal cases from attendance on a sloughing bubo, with erysipelatous inflaiTimation ; that Mr Slight of Hull had three fatal cases from attend- ing a case of erysipelas ; that Mr Hardey of Hull had seven fatal cases from attend- ing a case of erysipelas with sloughing abscess ; and that Mr Allen of York had a long list of fatal cases originating from one of erysipcl.TS—Provincial Medical Journal No. 166, December 1843.