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

  • Ingalls, William, 1769-1851.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A case of typhus or ship fever, with remarks / By Wm. Ingalls. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of typhus with more precision, a few preliminary remarks may not be inapplicable. There are, in my opinion, two kinds of fever, one originating from personal contagion, the other from causes which tend to stimulate the circulatory system to excess. Typhus is de¬ pendent on the action of the former, synocha is the result of the latter. As ephemera and synocha are the product of the same cause, I place them in the same category. Synochus is composed of syno¬ cha and typhus ; but as a compound or mixed fever cannot exist at the same time, the term synochus should be expunged, and typhus substituted. Though many instances may be cited, in which, from the begin¬ ning, symptoms of typhus are apparent, yet, at the onset of the fever, symptoms of synocha, which continue an indefinite period before the type of the disease can be ascertained, are most com¬ monly predominant. It is on this ground nosologists have intro¬ duced into their systems, under the denomination of synochus, a compound disease. In accordance with their views, this generic title should, perhaps, be given to the continued fevers in this place. But the discrimination between the typhus and synochus appears to be too refined ; because every disease is modified so as to corres¬ pond to its cause, and to the nature of the tissues morbidly affected. For example : in eruptive fevers there is every variety of symp¬ toms to be found in typhus. The former may be ushered in by high arterial action, or from the first the vital powers may be so languid as to preclude the possibility of a salutary re-action taking place by the efforts of nature or the assistance of remedies ; or, at almost any period from their incursion, putrid symptoms may super¬ vene ; or, in their course, petechia and vibices may appear, and constitute a leading and menacing feature ; but whatever symptoms, synochal or typhoid, may iiave the ascendancy, eruptive diseases are by no means altered in their nature. To be more particular, the impression originating from the variolous poison cannot produce the distinctive characters of any other disease. The virus of small¬ pox cannot generate typhus, no more than the cause of typhus can beget smallpox.. In other words, however much, in its several stages, its fever may resemble that of other maladies, the smallpox is expressly a disease of its own kind and is not convertible. Acute fevers, also, of the continued form, are as much under the control of their causes, and as much modified by them, as those attributed to what is commonly called a specific virus-