On mixed types of fever in relation to the question of the identity or non-identity of typus and typhoid poisons / by Henry Kennedy.

  • Kennedy, Henry.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On mixed types of fever in relation to the question of the identity or non-identity of typus and typhoid poisons / by Henry Kennedy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    every type of fever is more frequent under 30 ; but what I would convey is this, that whilst typhus is common after 30, 40, and 50, enteric fever is exceedingly rare. I myself have not met it in any instance above 35, though it has, I know, been seen later; but, further still, every one is aware that in the course of enteric fever the lungs are very apt to become engaged. But in place of this affection passing off with the fever, as it does in typhus, it is by no means uncommon to meet cases where signs like phthisis declare themselves. The pulse keeps up, sweating occurs, and the cough is very troublesome and hard to relieve. I have said that such is common after enteric fever, and I have been forced to send several out of hospital in this state with the hope that change of air would benefit them, and in some I know that I heard of subsequently it had proved successful. That the idea I would put forward is not without some surer foundation than mere impression, I may cite the following instance :— Case 15_C., a girl of 16, was admitted into the Cork- street Hospital in January of the present year. She had a very fine skin, with light eyes and hair, and laboured under enteric fever in a very well-marked form. The diarrhoea proved most obstinate; but as the abdominal symptoms yielded the lungs got very much engaged from general bronchitis of the minute tubes, and for more than ten days the dyspnoea was of the most urgent character, the lips being quite livid and the distress very great. Though the urgency of this state lessened, the pulse still kept up, and the patient began to have regular sweats, and, finally, I was able to observe that the upper part of the right lung was becoming solidified. Nor did the disease stop here, for in a period of about seven weeks I was able to trace weekly the process of softening going on, till at last a cavity formed. In this state the patient left hospital, the physical signs in the top of the lung being those of a cavity, but the rest of the lungs being apparently quite sound, and as the patient’s passage had been taken for America, it is just, possible the predisposition to tubercle,