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.

    70/408 (page 54)
    and chilly fits alternately, witli languor and prostration of strength, followed by hot and dry skin, great thirst, tongue dry, furred, brown, and stiff; in some cases it was black, and so hard and dry, it could not be protruded; the bowels were generally costive ; the urine scanty and high coloured; in some cases headache; the eyes in all were bloodshot and Yery much tinged with yellow; and there was great tenderness of the scrobiculus cordis, and upper abdoniinal regions. The comphcations were inflammation of the liver, spleen, and of all the abdominal viscera. Relapses are thus alluded to : Many of those whose constitution was broken down by age or previous disease, suffered a relapse, with dysenteric symptoms ; and these were the cases which cliiefly proved fatal. Mr. Seattle attributed the epidemic to the inadequate quantity of food supplied to the prisoners under the system of reduced diet allowance put in force by order of the Court of Nizamut Adawlut. He gives the following statistics. Average strength of prisoners, 963i. Mortality from all diseases, 135, or 14-01 per cent. India Journal of Medical and Physical Science, edited by G. Bveleigh; New Series, vol. i., pp. 171 and 202. Calcutta, 1843. In the same year, the disease appeared ui the 34th N.L, at Mercara in Coorg. Speaking of the fevers at this station, Mr. J. Lavsrence, the surgeon of the regiment, states that they were of greater severity than those usually met with. Anasarca occurred after a few days of quotidian fever; swellings of the hands and feet, and sometimes puffi- ness of the face. In some in whom the fatal termination had been rapid, effusion into the pericardium apparently took place. Hydrothorax also commenced with the same symptoms, i.e. with intermittent fever. In these diseases, and frequently in rheumatism, the patient often complained of loss of power and sensation, and walked with a tottermg gait; these symptoms being sometimes preceded and some- times followed by oedema of the feet and hands, iliis affection was almost always preceded by slight fever, ibe symptoms approached very nearly to beri-bcri, when the partial paralysis and cedema only existed. The heart was generally irritable, and there was a tendency to effusion into the chest. There was a remarkable tendency to relapse