The commencement of a practical system of medicine : to meet the premonitions of disease, and to secure on rational principles more uniform popular benefit, on the immediate and absolute requirements of nature, through her earliest co-operation : with permanent and satisfactory pledges, as to the medicine used in all the departments of fevers of general character / by Thomas J. Vaiden.

  • Vaiden, Thomas J.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The commencement of a practical system of medicine : to meet the premonitions of disease, and to secure on rational principles more uniform popular benefit, on the immediate and absolute requirements of nature, through her earliest co-operation : with permanent and satisfactory pledges, as to the medicine used in all the departments of fevers of general character / by Thomas J. Vaiden. 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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    minor—to command the chill, ever command its preceding symptoms. This fever, the like of which I have seen but once—which disease is so much unknown to the people generally, though they should al- ways be prepared for such, as an insidious stranger that deceives to destroy—seemed to threaten as severely as that some years ago at the University of Virginia, when its fatality was alarming and so decisive. I say so insidious was this disease—though it was then the second case before the eyes of this family—and its estimation of chill and fever would be so regarded by most of families under the present mode of medical treatment: and many a tragedy thus enacted. Who would exult, when no locality is exempt, no patient secure from such contingency at times, as healthy the residence and as robust the constitution may be 1 Was there not also an equal and general want of appreciation elsewhere ? About the time just related, two gentlemen from a county in this state, mentioned that a very severe disease was then prevailing there, so fatal that the doctors had not time scarcely to work on the same before death. I infer, justly no doubt, from confirmation of sickness there by an acquaintance, that the disease was speedily fatal to a great extent, from the same universal reasons, and must have been there too, as elsewhere, most signally unappreciated by the affected^ families. What did they call it'( It was hard to assign any out of several names. In another county the disease was prevailing, and my informant tells me he presumes one third of the affected died. His words are, four of ten patients thus affected in two families have died, and some of the survivors linger or were down longer than four weeks. This view is abundantly sustained in various places elsewhere, to the amount of five and probably six deaths in some families. Some con- skier it slow fever. It has been treated under variety of names, which have been changed before publication! I presume its severe character will not be disputed, by any gentleman, whether typhus, typhoid, influenza or cold plague—connected to and varied by some predominance of organic or capillary affection, causing variety of terms under the relative intensity. Thus many names may be refer- red to. But where is the correct pathology in the mean time ?— Whether the distinction was external or internal, I have uniformly acted as if the whole were typhus, more or less intense and more or less complex. The fatal character of this winter fever at once fixes enough beyond cavil and dispute for our purpose. Of several states visited by it under various terms, I will cite this one statement: New Disease.—The Alton (Illinois) Telegraph, of the 8th inst,, states that a most malignant disease has made its appearance in the neighborhood of that city called the cold plague, which generally carries off its victims in the course of two or three days. The pa- tient is first seized by a chill, which usually lasts about two hours, and is succeeded by a violent fever, attended with intense pain in the head, chest and limbs. The sufferer sometimes sinks under the fe- ver which follows the first chill, but most frequently after the second. A number of names are given of those who have already died of it.