Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 1: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
History
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 1: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
and cuticular infection, so an eruption (though ever so small) seems to
be the only certain sign of the infection of the _whole_ system. The
eruption is the more decisive in its report, in proportion as it comes
out and goes off in the usual manner of the small-pox in the natural
way. In those cases where patients have been secured against a second
attack of the disease, when there have been no _obvious_ fever or
_visible_ eruption, I think I have observed an unusual inflammation, and
a copious and long continued discharge of matter from the arm. Perhaps
this may serve as an outlet of the matter, which in other cases produces
the fever and eruption. I am the more disposed to embrace this opinion,
from the testimony which several authors have left us of the effects
of ulcers in securing the body from the infection of the plague. The
effects of issues are still more to our purpose. We observe a plentiful
discharge of matter from them every time the body is exposed to cold,
and the febrile effects of it upon the system are thereby frequently
obviated. How far a ratio exists between the degrees of inflammation
and the discharge of matter from the arm, and the degrees of fever and
eruption, must be determined by future and very accurate observations.
If it should appear, that there are the least inflammation and smallest
discharge, where there have been the highest fever and most copious
eruption; and, on the contrary, if it should appear that there are
the greatest inflammation and discharge, where there have been the
least fever and smallest eruption, I must beg leave to add, without
attempting in this place to explain the reasons of it, that the remark,
if generally true, is liable to some exceptions. But the subject is
involved in darkness; I shall be satisfied if I have brought you within
sight of the promised land. Your own ingenuity, like another Jewish
leader, must conduct you thither.
The indications in the treatment of the body during the eruptive fever
are,
I. To regulate the degree of fever.
II. To mitigate troublesome and alarming symptoms.
The fever which produces the eruption is generally of the inflammatory
kind. It sometimes, therefore, comes on with the symptoms of great heat,
preceded with chilliness, and determination to the head and breast, and
a full hard pulse. The remedies proper in this case are,
1. Blood-letting. The quantity to be drawn must be regulated by the
violence of the symptoms, the constitution, habits, and even country of
the patient, and by the season of the year. I have never found more than
one bleeding, to the quantity of twelve or fourteen ounces, necessary
in any stage or degree of the eruptive fever of the small-pox by
inoculation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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