Clinical medicine; a manual for the use of students and junior practitioners.

  • Bury, Judson Sykes.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical medicine; a manual for the use of students and junior practitioners. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    117/498 (page 93)
    sweating occurs at the commencement of febrile diseases, it usually indicates great weakness; but in acute rheumatism profuse sweats are characteristic of the disease, and are met with both early and late. In children, however, suffering from rheumatic fever, sweating is not common, and may be represented only by a slight increase in the moisture of the palms and soles. Profuse nocturnal perspiration is a feature of phthisis, in the early as well as in the advanced stages. Head sweating is an important sign of early rickets, and probably bears some relation to the hyperplastic skull changes. Sudden out- breaks of sweating have been noticed in epileptics; copious sweating occurs, too, during the course of an epileptic fit, but to a less degree than in tetanus, where, owing to the violent muscular action, perspira- tion streams from the body. The respiratory distress of asthma and the agonising pain of angina pectoris are also accompanied by hyperi- drosis. In paralysis agitans the least exertion of mind or body is apt to produce intense perspiration. Local hyperidrosis may be limited to the palms and soles, or be hemiplegic or paraplegic in distribution. It is probably dependent on faulty innervation, produced by a local neuritis, or by damage to the sympathetic system, as when the cervical portion of the spinal cord is injured, or by a brain lesion. Occasionally unilateral sweating occurs in hysteria. A diminution or absence of perspiration, called anidrcsis, may be observed in the early stages of many fevers, in diabetes and in granular kidney. In rheumatic fever, sudden drying of a previously moist skin is sometimes the forerunner of hyperpyrexia. A stinging, hot, dry skin is particularly noticeable in acute pneumonia. Qualitative Changes.—Sometimes, in cases of jaundice, the sweat has a yellowish tinge. In uraemia and in cholera the quantity of urea may be so great that white crystals like hoar-frost are deposited on the body. Red or bloody sweat is occasionally met with, and in rare cases the sweat is tinted with blue or some other colour. The secretion may be very offensive, as is frequently the case in the sweating feet of domestic servants. Rheumatic fever, syphilis and uraemia often give a characteristic odour to the sweat. The reaction in health, when proper precautions are taken, is alkaline or neutral. In acute rheumatism the reaction to litmus paper may vary in different parts of the body; the administration of salicine preparations probably tends to convert an acid into an alkaline secretion.