An essay on the history, causes, and treatment of typhus fever : to which the annual prize for the year 1829 was awarded by the Medical Society of the State of New York / by Alfred T. Magill.

  • Magill, Alfred T. (Alfred Thruston), 1804-1837.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the history, causes, and treatment of typhus fever : to which the annual prize for the year 1829 was awarded by the Medical Society of the State of New York / by Alfred T. Magill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    account of it; but until the appearance of Armstrong's work, our mo- tions of the nature of this fever were very obscure; he has the high merit of having clearly and ably elucidated its pathology; and of ha- ving opened a new field for medical enquiry and research. The dis- ease, according to him, consists in an engorgement or distention of the large internal veins; and differs from his other divisions of typhus in having no stage of excitement or reaction of the heart from the first shock of the disease. We cannot do better than copy his description of the symptoms of congestion; they are portrayed in his best style. The attacks (says he) of the most dangerous forms of the congestive typhus, are generally sudden, and marked by many remarkable symptoms: an overpowering lassitude; feebleness of the lower limbs; deep pain, giddiness, a sense of weight in the encephalon; a dingy pal- lidness of the face; anxious breathing; damp, relaxed, or dry withered skin; and those peculiar conditions of the temperature which have been noticed above.* The pulse is low, stuggling, and variable; the sto- mach irritable; frequently there is an inability from the first to hold up the head; and the mind' is more often affected with dulness, appre- hension, and confusion, than with delirium. The whole appearance of the sick impresses the attentive practitioner with the idea, that the system in general, and the brain in particular, are oppressed by some extraordinary load. Both the manner and look of the patients under- go early and great alteration; sometimes they slowly drawl out their words, or utter them in a hasty and yet imperfect mode, like people who slightly stammer when embarrassed; they not unfrequently seem as if stunned by a blow, half drunk, or lost in a reverie; and at times have the bewildered aspect of persons suffering under the first shock of an overwhelming misfortune. The eye is occasionally glassy and vacant, without redness; but at other times it is heavy, watery, and streaked with blood, as il from intoxication or want of sleep. At the commencement, the pulse is often less altered as to frequency than might reasonably be expected, yet in general it becomes very rapid towards the close; the tongue is usually little altered in the first stage; but in the last, it is frequently rough, foul, and brown; the bowels are mostly very torpid in the beginning, and the stools procured dark and scanty; whereas, in the last stage, the bowels are generally loose, and the stools copious and involuntary. Eructations are not uncommon at all times, and the epigastric region is often much inflated. On ac- count of the general torpor, the secretions are diminished or sup- pressed; and, as justly remarked by Dr. Robert Jackson, the skin is often in that peculiar state, that if blisters be applied, they either do not act at all, or so defectively, as to leave appearance as if the part had been seared by a heated iron. Petechia? in general appear ear- * Shnvolled cool skin. 3