A treatise on febrile diseases: intermitting, remitting, and continued fevers ; eruptive fevers ; inflammations ; hemorrhagies ; and the profluvia ; in which an attempt is made to present ... whatever ... it is requisite for the physician to know, respecting the symptoms, causes, and cure of those diseases ; with experimental essays, on certain febrile symptoms, on the nature of inflammation, and on the manner on [sic] which opium and tobacco act on the living animal body (Volume 1).

  • Philip, Alexander Philip Wilson, 1770-1847.
Date:
1809
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on febrile diseases: intermitting, remitting, and continued fevers ; eruptive fevers ; inflammations ; hemorrhagies ; and the profluvia ; in which an attempt is made to present ... whatever ... it is requisite for the physician to know, respecting the symptoms, causes, and cure of those diseases ; with experimental essays, on certain febrile symptoms, on the nature of inflammation, and on the manner on [sic] which opium and tobacco act on the living animal body (Volume 1). 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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    1 of complicated intermittcnts, that those are most to be dreaded whose paroxysms arc most severe on the even days. Some attempt to foretel the period at which the fever will ter- minate favourably, by attending to that at which it comes to its height ; that is, the time at which the paroxysms from becom- ing more violent, begin to become less so ; for it is common in these fevers for every paroxysm, during the first intervals, to be more violent than that which preceded it. The tertian inter- mittents, or remittents, which come to their height in the fourth period, (Clcghorn observes) terminate in the fifth or sixth; those which come to their height in the fifth, termi- <( nate about the sixth or seventh. Cleghorn speaks of the ter- tians of Minorca. No general rules of this kind can be laid down. Every one must make such observations for himself in the particular climate, and even epidemic, in which he practises. It is sufficient to be warned, that by making such observations he will be enabled with more accuracy to foresee the event of the disease. When a paroxysm occurs, which, without any evident cause, is considerably more severe than those which preceded it, it has often been observed to be the last paroxysm of the fever, the patient after it remaining well.* TO the head of prognosis, belongs the doctrine of critical days. This doctrine the reader will find noticed in the writings of physicians ever since the days of Hippocrates, who paid partic- ular attention to it. Some regard the doctrine of critical days as wholly unfounded. This opinion, however, appears to be the result of a careless view of the subject. In this country indeed the facts brought in support of it are seldom to be observed. But the complaints of different climates vary much, and the observations on which the doctrine of critical clays is founded, have been too frequently re- peated to permit us to doubt that there is a tendency to certain pe- riodic changes in the fevers of warmer latitudes. Physicians were soon led to observe the crises of fevers, viz. changes, often sudden, cither for the better or the worse, which take place in them, and to mark the days on which these, par-- ticularly the favourable, changes were observed to happen. Having observed a crisis take place in more than one patient on the same day of the fever, they were led to pay attention to this • day in other cases, and when they found a day, as the 2d, 3d, 4th, kc. of the disease on which a crisis happened more frequently than on most other days, this day they termed a critical or judi- cial day. * Fordycc's second Dissertation on Simple Fever.