Description of the distinct, confluent, and inoculated smallpox, varioloid disease, cow pox, and chicken pox / By John D. Fisher.

  • Fisher, John D. (John Dix), 1797-1850.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Description of the distinct, confluent, and inoculated smallpox, varioloid disease, cow pox, and chicken pox / By John D. Fisher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Period of eruption.—The eruption, in confluent variola, often breaks out on the second day of the fever, but more generally in the early part of the third, and always a number of hours sooner than in the discrete form of the disease. It is more commonly preceded or accompanied by an erysipela¬ tous efflorescence, and by a greater feeling of distention of the face and cutaneous surface generally, than when it assumes the distinct form. The efflorescence appears suddenly, is attended with considerable heat and per¬ spiration in adults, and diarrhoea in children, and in the course of a few hours invades the different regions of the body. The eruption presents itself in innumerable pimples, or inflamed papular points closely situated, and ap¬ pears almost simultaneously in every part of the body. In this respect par¬ ticularly, the confluent differs from the distinct small pox. The pimples frequently appear in clusters, and are sometimes so close together that their bases are in juxtaposition and touch each other. They are always more numerous on the face than on the trunk and extremities, and very frequently invade the mucous membranes of the internal cavities. On their first ap¬ pearance, and indeed for the first twenty-four hours of their existence, they do not differ materially from those of the distinct kind. They occupy the same texture, have the same organic relations, and possess the same ana¬ tomical structure. They differ from them only in being smaller, less promi¬ nent, and of a paler colour. In the course of the second day of its exist¬ ence, and always sooner than in the distinct species, the eruption becomes papulo-vesicular. The vesicles are first formed on the tops of the pimples, and are soon filled with a limpid serum. In a short time they enlarge and cover the whole superficies of the pocks, they are irregular in figure and are flat, seldom rising but little above the common surface. The delinea¬ tions in the lower right hand corner of figure 1, plate I. are good represen¬ tations of the pustules as they appear on the face when two days old. On the extremities the pocks are more tardy in becoming vesicular and are more regularly circumscribed. From the time the pimples become vesicu¬ lar they increase in breadth rapidly, and where they are in thronging num-