A case of typhus or ship fever, with remarks / by Wm. Ingalls.

  • Ingalls, William, 1769-1851.
Date:
1848
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A case of typhus or ship fever, with remarks / by Wm. Ingalls. 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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    sum of which constitutes the disease, British medical philosophers are mostly divided into two classes, the solidists and the humoralists. More strictly, we might call them the neuropathists and the hemu- pathists. The first maintain, that the impression of the morbid poison is primarily made upon the nervous system ; the latter main- tain, that this impression is made upon the blood. Dr. vV;ilson claims to belong to the class of the hemopathists. The blood, no doubt, is susceptible to the impression of morbific agents. When the digestive organs are rendered incapable of converting unwhole- some food into healthy chyle, the blood becomes vitiated, and then exerts a deleterious influence on the solids. In the scurvy, for in- stance, it is thin and surcharged with salts, and readily induces, says Vogel, liquefaction of the tissues (ulcerative destruction), without any trace of re-action or inflammation. The blood of per- sons addicted to intoxication belongs to the same category. The cause and mode of cure of scurvy come more within the sphere of our understanding, than almost any other disease ; persistence in unwholesome food producing the former, and the substitution of a nutritious diet the latter. Hence in the treatment of morbid de- rangements of the system, from whatever cause they may proceed, particular attention to diet and regimen is always beneficial, and, in many instances, indispensable. Vogel, in his Pathological Ana- tomy, strongly insinuates, that the seat of typhus fever as well as scurvy is in the blood, in the following extract: The salts, when artificially added, lessen the tendency to coagulation, and the latter (the alkaline salts) altogether destroy it. Thus, in a case of putrid typhoid fever, Schever found carbonate of ammonia in the blood, which was black and pitchy, and did not coagulate into a solid clot, but merely formed a diflluent saline mass. But there is no paral- lelism between these diseases, either in their cause, symptoms, course, termination, or mode of cure. It has long been my opinion, the constituent parts of the human body formed a living aggregate subjected to the control of the vital principle; the solid bone, the cartilage, the tendon—which are des- titute of red blood, nerves, and absorbents—and the most volatile and fluctuating fluids, are as much subject to its laws as the mus- cle, the brain and the blood. According to Callen, Willis was the first who applied the term nervous to fevers of any kind, which the English used long before