On the nature, causes, statistics, and treatment of erysipelas / by Peter Hinckes Bird.

  • Bird, P. Hinckes (Peter Hinckes), 1827-1891.
Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature, causes, statistics, and treatment of erysipelas / by Peter Hinckes Bird. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Although tlie respiration is observed to become short and frequent towards the end of the disease, it is otherwise of no prognostic value. All cases in which sudamina were observed were very severe ones. In nearly all fatal cases, the tongue was either immediately dry or soon became so; but this is by no means an invariable sign of fatal issue. It is a good sign when it becomes moist again; but even this was observed in two fatal cases. The dry, fissured, brown, scaly tongue, indicated a severe case, but not an invariably fatal one; the aphthous tongue was, for the most part, observed towards the end of a tedious and exhausting case. Very foul tongue, nasty taste, nausea, vomiting, cardialgia, occurred in fatal and severe cases. Diarrhoea was seldom observed in those cases cured before the tenth day, unless the patient be hectic or purgatives are given; it was more frequently observed in tedious cases, and is rather a frequent symptom in fatal cases, mostly indicating a serious complication of the disease; if foetid, profuse, and bloody, the unfavourableness of the prognosis is increased. Return of appetite and sleep is a sign of the termination of the disease. Cases of fresh eruption of the erysipelas appeared mostly free from danger. Its spreading to the mucous membrane of the eye is often observed in slight cases. However, it may involve all the structures of the eye, producing glaucoma and consequent loss of sight; and may lead to disease and protrusion of the eyeball, and arachnitis. (^Lancet; 1856; p. 199. Fenger: Op. Git.; 48.) In one case in which it spread to the cellular tissue of the orbit, complete amaurosis followed. I have met with an instance in which the difiFuse inflammation reflected inwards, caused purulent infiltration at the back of the orbit; and lately an interesting case of protrusion of the eye, consequent on diffuse inflammation of the orbit, followed by suppurative inflammation of the ophthalmic vein, extending to the cavernous sinus and middle cerebral veins, has been recorded. {Ophthalmic Hospital Reports, &c.; October, 1857, p. 26.) Mackenzie {Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Eye; p. 122) relates from Dr. Piorri, a case which (with numerous others of a similar character recorded by the same physician) makes it appear that one of the modes—perhaps the most frequent, but least suspected mode—in which erysipelas of the face and scalp proves fatal, is the spreading of the inflammation from the eyelids to the cellular tissue of the orbits, and the termination of it in abscess within that cavity. “ It sometimes happens,” he adds, “ that the cellular membrane of the orbit, although considerably affected, does not suppurate. On the subsiding of the acute symptoms, the eyeball in such cases is found to be deprived of its power of motion, is protruded, or has even become amaurotic from the pressure it has