A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 2 (of 2): From the Extinction of Plague to the Present TimeCreighton, Charles
History
A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 2 (of 2): From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time
Creighton, Charles
Epidemics -- Great Britain -- History
The nervous, putrid and remittent fevers, belonging, to the same group,
make up the bulk of the fevers. The hectic fevers were almost all of
children. The fatal cases of fever were fourteen, the fatal cases in all
diseases for the year having been forty-four. What these putrid, nervous
and remittent fevers were, will now appear from some of Lettsom’s
descriptions. Fevers with symptoms of putrescency were marked by nausea,
bitter taste, and frequent vomiting, by laboured breathing and deep
sighing, offensive breath, sweats offensive and sometimes tinged with
blood, almost constant delirium, the tongue dry, the tongue, teeth and
lips covered with black or brown tenacious foulness, thrush and ulceration
in the mouth and throat, the urine with a dark sediment, the stools
excessively nauseous and foetid, and blackish or bloody, the eyes horny or
glassy, with the whites often tinged of a deep blood colour, spots on the
skin like fleabites, or larger haemorrhagic vibices, bleeding from the
gums, nose or old ulcers, hiccup near death, often a cough through the
fever. Lettsom’s treatment consisted in good liquors, Peruvian bark, and
above all fresh, or “cold” air: “When it is considered that putrid fevers
originate in close unventilated places, the introduction of fresh air
seems so natural a remedy that I have often admired its aid should have
been so long neglected[243].” Accordingly he persuaded the poor people to
open their windows, and dragged the sick out of doors as soon as it was
safe to do so; the effects, he says, were wonderful. His fifty-one cases
are most valuable illustrations of the perennial fever in the crowded
parts of London:
Case 1 is of a man aged forty who had occasion to visit a miserable
crowded workhouse in Spitalfields. He was instantly seized with such a
nausea and debility as induced him to keep his room as soon as he got
home. At the end of a week Lettsom found him in “the true jail-fever,
or, what is the same, a true workhouse-fever.” He had involuntary
stools and leaping of the tendons, and took more wine in a week than
he had done for many years.
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