Volume 1

A system of medicine / edited by J. Russell Reynolds.

Date:
1866-1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of medicine / edited by J. Russell Reynolds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    210/976 (page 190)
    anatomical lesions ; and even if some equally euphonious but less objectionable term were now to be proposed, it is more than doubtful whether the inconvenience of its substitution would be attended with any adequate compensatory advantage. In this qualified sense the term “ Pyaemia ” will be used in the following pages. II. Definition of Pyaemia. Pyaemia is a disease, originating often in contagion, and attacking for the most part those who are suffering from the results of serious injuries attended with wounds, or who have undergone grave surgical operations, or who are labouring under acute suppurative inflamma- tion involving bones, or in whom parturition has recently occurred. Its onset is usually sudden, and marked by the occurrence of a severe rigor followed by profuse perspiration. Pdgors succeeded by per- spirations for the most part recur; the pulse becomes feeble, rapid, variable, often intermittent, the respirations shallow and frequent, and cough (attended or not with expectoration) commonly shows itself; the tongue generally becomes dry and furred ; the appetite fails ; and nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea not unfrequently supervene; the sur- face generally soon gets sallow or even distinctly jaundiced; the patient acquires very much the aspect of a person suffering from enteric fever; delirium at night often comes on; but he remains for the most part conscious, at least when roused, and soon becomes excessively feeble and prostrate. It happens often that, in the pro- gress of the malady, inflammation, or even suppuration, occurs in some accessible part or parts, especially in or about the joints and in the muscular and cellular tissues. The duration of Pyaemia is generally from about four to ten days ; but it now and then becomes chronic, and may then last for several weeks or even longer. Its result is almost invariably fatal. The chief lesions discoverable after death are patches of haemorrhage, or of inflammatory consolidation, or abscesses, scattered in various proportions among the different organs and tissues of the body, but occurring far more often and far more numerously in the lungs than elsewhere. The part antecedently affected is generally foimd in a state of suppuration, and unhealthily inflamed or sloughy. The most characteristic features of Pytemia seem to be -.—first, its supervention on certain special conditions of the system; second, the occurrence of rigors with perspirations ; third, the presence of jaun- dice ; fourth, the formation of external abscesses ; fifth, the great pros- tration and early death; and sixth, the occurrence of certain charac- teristic lesions, easy to be recognised after death.