Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 3: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
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Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 3: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
I take great pleasure likewise in acknowledging my obligations to my
former pupil, Dr. Woodhouse, who assisted me in the care of my patients,
after I became so weak as not to be able to attend them with the
punctuality their cases required. The disinterested exploits of these
young gentlemen in the cause of humanity, and their success in the
treatment of the disease, have endeared their names to hundreds, and, at
the same time, afforded a prelude of their future eminence and usefulness
in their profession.
But wherewith shall I come before the great FATHER and REDEEMER of men,
and what shall I render unto him for the issue of my life from the grave?
----Here all language fails:----
Come then, expressive silence, muse his praise.
AN ACCOUNT
OF THE
BILIOUS REMITTING AND INTERMITTING
_YELLOW FEVER_,
AS IT
APPEARED IN PHILADELPHIA,
IN THE YEAR 1794.
I concluded the history of the symptoms of the bilious remitting yellow
fever, as it appeared in Philadelphia in the year 1793, by taking notice,
that the diseases which succeeded that fatal epidemic were all of a
highly inflammatory nature.
In that history I described the weather and diseases of the months of
March and April, in the spring of 1794.
The weather, during the first three weeks of the month of May, was dry
and temperate, with now and then a cold day and night. The strawberries
were ripe on the 15th, and cherries on the 22d day of the month, in
several of the city gardens. A shower of hail fell on the afternoon of
the 22d, which broke the glass windows of many houses. A single stone of
this hail was found to weigh two drachms. Several people collected a
quantity of it, and preserved it till the next day in their cellars, when
they used it for the purpose of cooling their wine. The weather, after
this hail storm, was rainy during the remaining part of the month. The
diseases were still inflammatory. Many persons were afflicted with a sore
mouth in this month.
The weather in June was pleasant and temperate. Several intermittents,
and two very acute pleurisies, occurred in my practice during this month.
The intermittents were uncommonly obstinate, and would not yield to the
largest doses of the bark.
In a son of Mr. Samuel Coates, of seven years old, the bark produced a
sudden translation of this state of fever to the head, where it produced
all the symptoms of the first stage of internal dropsy of the brain. This
once formidable disease yielded, in this case, to three bleedings, and
other depleting medicines. The blood drawn in every instance was sizy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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