Volume 3

Medical inquiries and observations / by Benjamin Rush.

Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical inquiries and observations / by Benjamin Rush. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    48/462 (page 38)
    But there is a grade of fever, which transcends in force that which produces inflammation. It oc- curs frequently in hydrophobia, dysentery, colic, and, baron Humboldt lately informed me, upon the authority of Dr. Comoto, of Vera Cruz, in the yellow fever of that city, when it proves fatal in a few hours alter it attacks. In vain have physi- cians sought to discover, by dissections, the cause of fever in those cases, when followed by death, in the parts of the body in which it was supposed, from pain and other symptoms, to be principally seated. Those parts have frequently exhibited no marks of inflammation, nor of the least deviation from a healthy state. I have ascribed this apparent ab- sence of disease to the serous vessels being too highly excited, and thereby too much contracted, to admit the entrance of red blood into them. I wish these remarks to be remembered by the stu- dent of medicine. They have delivered me from the influence of several errors in pathology ; and they are capable, if properly extended and applied, of leading to many important deductions in the practice of physic. I shall now briefly mention the usual effects of fever, or morbid excitement in the blood-vessels, when not removed by medicine. They are,