A comparative view of the more intimate nature of fever : deduced from physiological analysis, and illustrated by critical remarks and practical observations / By James Black.

  • Black, James, 1788?-1867.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A comparative view of the more intimate nature of fever : deduced from physiological analysis, and illustrated by critical remarks and practical observations / By James Black. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    according as the system acquired more and more vigor. That the approach of the new paroxysm depends on the debiUty always augmenting, until it reaches its acme in the height of the cold stage ; may be inferred from the paroxysm being hastened in its return, even to some hours, by the patient taking a severe purge, or having been subject, in the remission, to some depressing agent. If any remote inference could be drawn, from the different characters of inter- mittent and continued fevers, as to the chief or pri- mary seat of the vital lesion, it may be supposed, that the capillary vitality of the surface of the body is most affected in the intermittent; and that, that of the interior is most, if not primarily, injured in the con- tinued form ;—and this may very probably be the cause of the greater distinctness and more external evolution of the several stages in the former, than in the latter section of fevers. In the first stage of Typhus and of the ardent re- mittent fever, symptoms of internal atony are among the earliest indications of the disease; and in many cases most serious congestions have taken place, before the reaction has been constituted. Congestion in the portal system of vessels very readily takes place, as the veins are not provided with valves ; and this part of the circulation is out of the reach of the direct motive power of the heart, and depends entirely on the muscular power, or materia vitee, of the vessels and their contained blood. A deficiency or injury V