Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 3: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
Science
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 3: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
The pain which attended the disease was different, according to the
different states of the system. In those cases in which it sunk under
the violence of the disease, there was little or no pain. In proportion
as the system was relieved from this oppression, it recovered its
sensibility. The pain in the head was acute and distressing. It affected
the eye-balls in a peculiar manner. A pain extended, in some cases, from
the back of the head down the neck. The ears were affected, in several
persons, with a painful sensation, which they compared to a string
drawing their two ears together through the brain. The sides, and the
regions of the stomach, liver, and bowels, were all, in different people,
the seats of either dull or acute pains. The stomach, towards the close
of the disease, was affected with a burning or spasmodic pain of the most
distressing nature. It produced, in some cases, great anguish of body and
mind. In others it produced cries and shrieks, which were often heard on
the opposite side of the streets to where the patients lay. The back
suffered very much in this disease. The stoutest men complained, and even
groaned under it. An acute pain extended, in some cases, from the back to
one or both thighs. The arms and legs sympathized with every other part
of the body. One of my patients, upon whose limbs the disease fell with
its principal force, said that his legs felt as if they had been scraped
with a sharp instrument. The sympathy of friends with the distresses of
the sick extended to a small part of their misery, when it did not
include their sufferings from pain. One of the dearest friends I ever
lost by death declared, in the height of her illness, that "no one knew
the pains of a yellow fever, but those who felt them."
VI. The _senses_ and _appetites_ exhibited several marks of the universal
ravages of this fever upon the body. A deafness attended in many cases,
but it was not often, as in the nervous fever, a favourable symptom. A
dimness of sight was very common in the beginning of the disease. Many
were affected with temporary blindness. In some there was a loss of sight
in consequence of gutta serena, or a total destruction of the substance
of the eye. There was in many persons a soreness to the touch which
extended all over the body. I have often observed this symptom to be the
forerunner of a favourable issue of a nervous fever, but it was less
frequently the case in this disease.
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