On the arrest of typhus fever by quinine / by Robert Dundas.

  • Dundas, Robert, active 19th century.
Date:
[1851]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the arrest of typhus fever by quinine / by Robert Dundas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    specific poisons? or, can we ever arrest, by any power, the course of a truly specific disease, as small-pox, etc. ? 3. The notion of typhus fever being unknown in the tropics, is altogether ill-founded. The intermittent, remittent, and con- tinued fevers of tropical climates often run into genuine typhus. In Brazil, when the disease takes this course, it is popularly termed mahgna, or malina, and, in some seasons, is very frequent and very fatal. 4. Bark, duly administered, will generally arrest the intermittent and remittent fever ; and typhus fever being essentially the same disease, bark ought to, and will, generally arrest it. 5. Ague will occasionally resist, for many days, the most judicious application of quinine—and finally yield: the same remark applies to typhus. 6. Quinine is more certain in its results in proportion to its early administration; but it is less to be depended on with the aged. 7. The administration of large doses of quinine in -typhus, when not curative, is never followed by the slightest ill effects. 8. As typhus is, commonly, the more severe form of fever, and the subjects of its attack generally less favourably disposed, so we shall find considerable discrepancy in the several results. 9. Tj'phus will occasionally resist quinine, and yield to other remedies, and the same holds good with ague; yet who ever associates the latter disease Avith any other remedy than quinine ? And I am firmly of opinion, that the time approaches when the treatment of typhus fever, after ages of vacillation, will be established on the same sure and satisfactory basis as that on which the treatment of ague now rests. Mr. Eddowes continues to adopt the quinine treatment universally with the patients in his section of the Fever Hospital: and Dr. Gee in his wards of the same establishment is now giving it a trial. From two such able observers in such an extensive field, we cannot fail to obtain valuable and correct information. Since the above was written, my attention has been called to an interesting report, in the last number of the Medical Gazette, by Dr. Humble, on fever, as it appeared during the last year, in the Newcastle Fever Hospital. The symptoms, indeed, are pretty much those which commonly characterise the fevers of this country; and I notice the report, chiefly, from the relapsing type assigned to the disease.^ After alluding to the diff'erent periods at which the relapse oc- curred. Dr. H. goes on to state : In general, this came on after con- valescence had commenced, and it did so in spite of any precaution which could be devised against it A boy became convalescent, and was ordered to keep his bed until the usual period of relapse had passed oyer. This was accomplished with considerable difiiculty, as he felt himself perfectly icell; but on the evening of the fifteenth day, the relapse, or, as it might be called, the second attack, of fever came » Upon Relapsing Fever, so well described, in 1843, by Dr. Cormack, and more recently by Dr. Jenner and others, I have made some remarks in my forthcoming volume.