An account of the bilious remitting yellow fever, as it appeared in the city of Philadelphia, in the year 1793 / [Benjamin Rush].

  • Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813.
Date:
1796
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of the bilious remitting yellow fever, as it appeared in the city of Philadelphia, in the year 1793 / [Benjamin Rush]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tes of the contagion, aéting upon the arteries with too much force to admit of their being excited into quick and convulfive motions. The remedy which removed it (to be mentioned hereafter) will render this explanation of its caufe ftill more probable. Milton defcribes a darknefs, from an excefs of light. Tn like manner, we obferve in this {mall Intermitting and flow pulfe, a deficiency of {trength from an ex- cefs of force applied to it. In every cafe of it which came under my notice, it was likewife tenfe or chor- ded. ‘This fpecies of pulfe occurred chiefly in the month of Auguft, and in the firft ten days in Sep- tember. I had met with it formerly in a f{poradic cate of yellow fever. It was new to all my pupils. One of them, Mr Wathington, gave it the name of the ‘ undefcribable pulfe.” It aided in determining the f{pecific nature of this fever before the common bilious remittent difappeared in the eity. For a while, I afcribed this peculiarity. in the pulfe, more efpecially its flowne/:, to an affedtion of the brain on- dy, and fufpected that it was produced by what I have taken the liberty elfewhere to call the phrenicula, or inflammatory ftate of the internal dropfy of the brain, and which i have remarked to be an occafjon- al fymptom and confequence of remitting fever.* [ was the more difpofed to adopt this opinion, from perceiving this flow and intermitting pulfe. more fre- quently in children than in adults. Imprefled with. this idea, I requefted Mr Coxe, one of my pupils, to ailift me in examining the ftate of the eye.- Fortwo days we difcovered no change in it, but on the third day after we began to infpect the eyes, we both per- ceived a preternatural dilatation of the pupils in dif. ferent patients; and we feldom afterwards faw an eye 10 which it was abfent. In Dr Say it was at. tended by a fquinting, a fymptom which marks a high degree of a morbid affection of the brain. Had * Medical Inquiries and Obfervations, Vol. 1. B