Notes and observations upon the contagion of typhous fever, and contagion generally / by William Fergusson.

Date:
[1832?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes and observations upon the contagion of typhous fever, and contagion generally / by William Fergusson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    not wonder when we see it devastate the hovel and the cottage. Even so trifling a cause as the continuance of wet feet,—that most noxious and depressing, because adhesive and permanent application of cold, where the circulation at the extremities must necessarily be the weakest,—has been known to induce an attack of typhus fever, when the moral and physical causes just enu- merated could have lent little aid otherwise to the developement of the disease. Typhous fever, then, is not only an endemic disease sui ge- neris; but so strong is the predisposition to that form of pyrexia, that it is prone to become an aggravation and super-addition to other forms of fever; and all the remittent types and degrees, as well as the catarrhal and peripneumonic fevers, are apt, either when long-continued, or improperly treated under a heating re- gimen, to glide into it. This must be familiar to every practi- tioner ; and 1 need not here dilate upon it. But besides the en- demic origin which I have here explained, there appears to be another source of the typhoid poison quite independent of sea- son, atmosphere, and locality, which gives rise to a most viru- lent, aggravated, and dangerous form of this fever. I mean that which arises from accumulated human effluvia in crowded ill-ventilated hospitals, prisons, ships, barracks, or other habita- tions. I acknowledge it to be unphilosophical and incongruous to imagine that two fevers springing out of sources so distinct should yet so entirely resemble each other, that they have ever been treated, classed, and acknowledged for the same; nor can I af- ford any satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon. But the fact is certain that they do so arise; for, in the contagious ulcer, or hospital gangrene, we possess a demonstrable, tangible, and visible proof of its existence. This ulcer is precisely a lo- cal form of typhous fever,—a visible personification, if I may use the term, of the typhoid poison. It never occurs but under the most distressful crowding of sick and wounded; and it is then so highly contagious, that all other ulcers, or even abrasions of the skin, however healthy before, are speedily involved in its destructive course; and so highly does it impregnate the sur- rounding atmosphere with its contagion, that it is not even safe to bleed a patient in the same ward where it lies. You may look in vain for its origin under any circumstances in our hos- pitals, but those just enumerated as being capable of inducing typhous fever upon the sound healthy inmates; but in the wound- ed, where the poison finds a nidus and a vent, instead of affect- ing the constitution generally, it commits its hideous ravages upon the wounded limb. * * The above relates to hospital gangrene alone, and has no reference to endemic