An essay on intermittent and bilious remittent fevers : with their pathological relation to ozone / by E. S. Gaillard, M.D.

  • Gaillard, E. S. (Edwin Samuel), 1827-1885.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on intermittent and bilious remittent fevers : with their pathological relation to ozone / by E. S. Gaillard, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the blood, as relative to the proportion of the red corpuscles so invariably observed. Our attention is next riveted by that incomprehensible element, periodicity, so conspicuously stamped on every page of their history; not that periodicity is unobser- vable in all Fevers, for we know the contrary to be the case; but that it is in these Fevers so uniformly and palpably mani- fested, that they are themselves cited as the very type of the phenomenon. Any periodicity, contradictive in its manifesta- tions of that which is impressed upon us by the harmonies of nature, implies an unnatural, or it may be, a diseased state of the system. Natural periodicity is exhibited in diurnal and septenary periods, and when otherwise, is the effect of a cause which we recognize as disease. Chossat remarks, that there is even in the diurnal cycle a periodicity in respiration, and con- sequently in calorification; proving his position by explaining a phenomenon but hitherto observed by all—the greater diffi- culty of bearing exposure to cold between midnight and early morning, than at any other period in the twenty-four hours. Scharling observes, that the maximum of carbonic acid is exhaled before and after noon ; the minimum before and after midnight; corroborating thus, by proof, the truth of Chossat's assertions ; while, at the same time he gives us the rationale of the fact. By the unprofessional this mystery has not gone unobserved ; and Dickens chronicles this truth, when one of his characters is described to us, in the quaint language of the peo- ple, as going out with the tide; shewing, in some obscure way, the periodic effect of lunar influences, even upon the sands in the glass of life. In the inorganic world we observe this periodicity in that, obscure causation, under which the massive volcano emits into the superincumbent ether the liquid contents of its bosom ; in the material, from the exquisitely exact revo- lution of our globe and its sister planets ; in the progress of the tidal wave, registering in its course the effect of a cause, resi- dent in the liquid orb which controls it. The vegetable world shows it to us, in the specific duration of time which, as well in the highest as the lowest of its specimens, governs the several and specific stages of their existence; whilst, when we look at the animal, we mark the impress, in the manifestations o{ those habits which so strictly rule, as to similate their Creator