Statement / by Dr. Murchison.

  • Murchison, Charles, 1830-1879.
Date:
[1863]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statement / by Dr. Murchison. 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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    follows:— “ Dr. Tweedie, being about to republish his lectures, I feel it due to myself further to state, that most of his facts and reasonings hearing on the question of the 1 change of type’ of continued fevers, will be found in a paper published by me in the Edinburgh Medical Journal for August 1858. As Dr. Tweedie omits to mention my paper, I think it necessary to allude to the circum- stance, lest it might appear that I had now borrowed some of my remarks from his lectures without acknowledgment.” The paper here referred to was written in reply to a celebrated essay on the same subject by Dr. Christison of Edinburgh; it had no connection with that published in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions ; and but few of the facts and reasonings contained in it were derived from the statistics of the London Fever Hos- pital. The entire passage, treating on the change of type of con- tinued fevers, is reprinted below from Dr. Tweedie’s lectures, with the corresponding passages in my previously published essay, in parallel columns. The comparison shows, that the reasoning, every one of the facts adduced in its support, and indeed, the iden- tical figures and calculations derived from widely scattered data, which are contained in Dr. Tweedie’s lectures, are to be found in my essay. Not only is every one of the facts quoted by Dr. Tweedie to be found in my essay, but every one of the facts in my essay is absorbed into Dr. Tweedie’s lectures ; not one is omitted. The comparison also shows, that if I had not noticed the circum- stance, it might have appeared, that in my recent work I had borrowed my views on this subject from Dr. Tweedie without acknowledgment. Whether or not, Dr. Tweedie borrowed his remarks from my essay in the Edinburgh Journal, or from the separate copies which I presented to him, the resemblance between the passages, is sufficiently close to justify the notice in my preface. Dr. Murchison. (Remarks on the changes which are supposed to have taken place in the type of Continued Fever.—Edin. Med. Journ., August 1858.) “In comparing the mortality from continued fever, at different times and places, or for the purpose of judging of the merits of different plans of treatment, it is essential to take into account the form of fever which has prevailed.” “ It is not a legitimate argument in favour of a change in the constitutional type of fever, to contrast the mortality after bloodletting in the relapsing epi- demic of 1817-20, with what would be the effects of bleeding in the typhus of the present day.” Dr. Tweedie. (“ Lectures on Fevers,” Lancet, May 19th, 1860, p. 487. Reprinted Edi- tion, 1802, pp. 215-17.) “ But I am strongly persuaded that, in regard to fevers, the true explana- tion will be found in the fact that, until very recently, little or no atten- tion has been paid to the ever-vary- ing differences in form which they assume—at one time typhus, at ano- ther enteric (or typhoid), or it may be relapsing fever—constituting the features of the prevailing epidemic. So that the question of the identity or non-identity of the several forms of continued fevers becomes of the greatest importance in relation to the change of type theory.