Treatise on diseases of the skin : founded on new researches in pathological anatomy and physiology / by P. Rayer ... ; translated from the French by William B. Dickinson.

  • Rayer, Pierre François Olive, 1793-1867.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on diseases of the skin : founded on new researches in pathological anatomy and physiology / by P. Rayer ... ; translated from the French by William B. Dickinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    seen this great difficulty of respiration produced by a very intense pseudo-membranous bronchitis. § 38. (c.)Rubeola is contagious, and produced by some agent of an unknown character. This cause is specific, and does not act, in general, more than once on the same individual. Some persons, however, may have frequent communication with those affected with rubeola, and still not be attacked themselves by the contagion. Nevertheless, the number of persons who seem to be proof against this disease, is consider- ably less than that of individuals in whom variola never de- clares itself. Measles attacks all ages, and is developed in all climates. It is most commonly met with in young children. Vogel and others assert that infants have presented traces of it at their birth. It more frequently prevails at the end of winter and beginning of spring, than at any other season. It is nearly always epidemic, and is communicated by contact or infection. According to Home, it may also be produced by inoculation of the blood of persons affected with it.* ^ 39. (d.) Rubeola exhibits characters sufficiently'distinct from scarlatina, roseola, miliaria, urticaria, petechia?, &c. when its symptoms are compared with those of these different dis- eases. However, redness and tumefaction of the cheeks, when very great, may obscure or mask the particular form of the exanthema on these parts, but still it is to be observed more distinctly on other regions. Measles differs from roseola not alone in the form of the exanthema, but also by the gastro- intestinal inflammation which accompanies it. Most of those cases entitled rubeola without catarrh, and mentioned in some treatises, are really nothing more than cases of roseola or ery- thema. The presence of the exanthema prevents the disease from being confounded with pulmonary catarrh. Those pre- tended cases of measles without eruption would more pro- perly be entitled to the name of catarrh without measles ; for, even supposing that the gastro-puhnonary inflammations that are observed during epidemics of measles, to be produced by the specific cause of this latter, still they present no peculiar characters distinguishing them from ordinary phlegmasia? of the air and digestive passages, or anything to authorize us to consider them as varieties of rubeola. I must add, that in the study of rubeola, it is of the first importance to ascertain the extent and intenseness of the internal inflammations accom- panying the exanthema, and, in particular, the degree of the * Vide Crises.