Observations on the disease usually termed puerperal fever : with cases / by William Campbell.

  • Campbell, William, 1788-1848.
Date:
[1822]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the disease usually termed puerperal fever : with cases / by William Campbell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    acuteness of observation, have been satisfied that this dis- tinction is impracticable, useless, or hurtful. The opinion of this disease being a putrid fever, has been so completely disproved by the result of those gentlemen’s practice who treated it upon this principle, that such senti- ments are now very justly ridiculed by most practitioners; and I have no hesitation in saying, that it was to this opi- nion our former unsuccessful results in the practice of this disease should be in a great measure attributed ; for until Dr Gordon of Aberdeen’s admirable treatise on this subject appeared, “ the pen of writers did little more than record the times and places when and where it proved most fatal, the appearance it put on, its symptoms, its devastations, and a variety of modes of treatment that had no certain success.” As to this affection being a bilious fever, 1 suppose the coffee-coloured vomiting, together with the diarrhoea some- times observed in the disease, were the appearances which gave rise to this notion, the same as was formerly the case in yellow fever; but, with the exception of the diarrhoea, and what is rejected by vomiting, neither the other symp- toms during life, nor the appearances on dissection, demon- strate any thing to prove this opinion ; on which account, it should be rejected as purely speculative. It is true that, in some cases, the peritoneal covering of the liver has been found in a state of inflammation ; but the organ itself was unaffected. Monsieur Doulcet on the Continent, and Walsh in this country, treated the disease upon this principle, and were astonishingly successful in their treatment. The for- mer says, that “ all his patients, to the number of 200, re- covered by the practice employed, except six, who could not be prevailed upon to follow itand the latter, that his “ practice was followed by an uninterrupted success.” Not- withstanding these successful results, it is remarkable, how-