Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
Science
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
2. A fever of the hectic kind, accompanied by chilly fits, and night
sweats, and a pulse full, quick, and occasionally hard. The discharges
from the lungs, in this state of the disease, are frequently purulent.
3. A fever with a weak frequent pulse, a troublesome cough, and copious
purulent discharges from the lungs, a hoarse and weak voice, and chilly
fits and night sweats alternating with a diarrh[oe]a.
From this short history of the symptoms of pulmonary consumption there
are occasional deviations. I have seen four cases, in which the pulse
was natural, or slower than natural, to the last day of life. Mrs.
Rebecca Smith, the lovely and accomplished wife of Mr. Robert Smith,
of this city, passed through the whole course of this disease, in the
year 1802, without a single chilly fit. Two other cases have come under
my notice, in which there was not only an absence of chills, but of
fever and night sweats. A similar case is recorded in the Memoirs of
the Medical Society of London; and lastly, I have seen two cases which
terminated fatally, in which there was neither cough nor fever for
several months. One of them was in Miss Mary Loxley, the daughter of
the late Mr. Benjamin Loxley, in the year 1785. She had complained of
a pain in her right side, and had frequent chills with a fever of the
hectic kind. They all gave way to frequent and gentle bleedings. In the
summer of 1786, she was seized with the same complaints, and as she had
great objections to bleeding, she consulted a physician who gratified
her, by attempting to cure her by recommending exercise and country air.
In the autumn she returned to the city, much worse than when she left
it. I was again sent for, and found her confined to her bed with a pain
in her right side, but without the least cough or fever. Her pulse was
preternaturally slow. She could lie only on her left side. She sometimes
complained of acute flying pains in her head, bowels, and limbs. About
a month before her death, which was on the 3d of May, 1787, her pulse
became quick, and she had a little hecking cough, but without any
discharge from her lungs. Upon my first visit to her in the preceding
autumn, I told her friends that I believed she had an abscess in her
lungs. The want of fever and cough afterwards, however, gave me reason
to suspect that I had been mistaken. The morning after her death, I
received a message from her father, informing me that it had been among
the last requests of his daughter, that the cause of her death should be
ascertained, by my opening her body. I complied with this request, and,
in company with Dr. Hall, examined her thorax. We found the left lobe
of the lungs perfectly sound; the right lobe adhered to the pleura, in
separating of which, Dr. Hall plunged his hand into a large sac, which
contained about half a pint of purulent matter, and which had nearly
destroyed the whole substance of the right lobe of the lungs.
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