A treatise on relapsing or famine fever / by R.T. Lyons.

  • Lyons, R. T.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on relapsing or famine fever / by R.T. Lyons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/408 (page 7)
    tation; adyaamic typhoid symptoms, dysentery and diai'- rhcea often snperrene; death occurred in the worst cases on the eio-hth or tenth day, sometimes on the third or fourth; some of the cases were very protracted, and lasted for several months, the spleen becoming much enlargedre- lapses occurred in others, followed by death on the twentieth day of the disease or so. Dr. Mantell considered the disease to be analogous to the severe fever of 1863-64: to be a highly concentrated malarious fever, and not to be conta- gious. Dr. Sutherland, who has had a large experience, calls it relapsing or famine bilious fever, and considers it to be infectious and contagious. In the report for the following year. Dr. Green, the head of the Indian Medical Depart- ment, repeats the same view of the fever. He says, The fever has been a malarious one of an intensely poisonous and depressing character. It has also borne the features of the relapsing contagious fever. . . . It is to be feared that it became contagious in the crowded and wi-etched huts and dwellings of the poor. Dr. D. B. Smith's report, pubhshed in the GahiMa Gazette of July, 1869, contains no description of the disease ; and the same omission was made by Dr. EUiott in his report, published in the Calcutta Gazette of June, 1863. A few epidemics which occurred in extra-Indian ter- ritory have been given a place in the text. It will be observed that all the accounts of epidemics reflect more or less light upon each other, and that the fuUer and more complete descriptions of some writers help to supply the deficiencies of the less perfect accounts. Inaccuracy, in- completeness, confusion, and even some inconsistency, are naturally to be expected in the accounts of a disease which was not understood, which was mistaken sometimes for other diseases, and confounded with the other forms of specific fever, and the very existence of which in India even in the present day has been denied by the highest authorities. These are considerations to be kept m mind in forming an opinion regarding the nature of each of the epidemics related in the text. The earhest example of the disease in India is found in Mr. Holwell's account of the catastrophe of the Black Hole