A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 2 : $b General diseases (continued) and diseases of the digestive system
Science
A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 2 : $b General diseases (continued) and diseases of the digestive system
Medicine -- Practice
The articulations as well as the bones in very severe cases of scurvy
present evidences of disease, consisting in periostitic effusions which
involve the surrounding soft parts, producing impairment of motion,
enlargement, and false ankylosis, and even destroying the normal
anatomical relation of the osseous surfaces, so as to determine
deformities. These changes are usually attended with severe pain, and
most commonly occur in the ankle-, knee-, shoulder-, and hip-joints,
and disappear tardily, requiring perhaps months for their recession, if
indeed this takes place at all.
The symptoms manifested by the circulatory organs are prominent from an
early period of the disease. The pulsations of the heart are slower,
feebler, irregular, and often intermittent; its impulse is decreased or
becomes quite imperceptible; and when the associated anæmia has
progressed to a certain extent a systolic murmur may be audible. The
arterial and venous channels are of diminished calibre; the pulse
becomes soft, of less volume, and tardier; and a venous murmur may
sometimes be heard in the cervical veins. The remarkable nutritive
changes in the capillary walls in part account for the numerous
hemorrhages which occur both by rhexis and diapedesis. The most
frequent is epistaxis; the slightest blows, sneezing, or blowing the
nose will often determine it, or it may occur spontaneously, and in
severer cases with such profuseness as to threaten impending
dissolution, requiring nothing less than timeous introduction of the
tampon to rescue the victim. Hemorrhage from the {180} lungs is of rare
occurrence, and when it does happen is rather indicative of
pre-existing pulmonary disease, such as phthisis, or of the approach of
a complication, such as infarction or gangrene, than a constituent
feature of scurvy. Hæmatemesis is less uncommon, but is by no means
frequent; the blood ejected from the stomach is usually small in
quantity, but in isolated examples the bleeding is profuse, producing
great exhaustion and a sense of cardiac depression which preludes
speedy death. Hemorrhage from the bowels is also an ill-omened feature,
completely blanching the patient and presaging early exhaustion and
death. Blood may also appear as a product of a complicating dysentery
which determines abundant, offensive discharges that may run on for
several weeks before the patient is finally exhausted. Hæmaturia
sometimes occurs, especially in broken-down and cachectic subjects and
in an advanced stage of scurvy. All of these forms of hemorrhagic
effusion, now mentioned as localized in the mucous membranes, are to be
deprecated as exercising a pernicious influence, seriously aggravating
ordinary cases and fatally jeopardizing the issue of severe ones.
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