Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
History
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
12. An undue proportion of serum to crassamentum in the blood. This
predominance of water in the blood has often checked sufficient
blood-letting. But it should be constantly disregarded while it is
attended with those states of pulse (to be mentioned hereafter) which
require bleeding.
14. The presence of petechiæ on the skin. These, I have elsewhere said,
are the effects of the gangrenous state of fever. Dr. Sydenham and Dr. de
Haen have taught the safety and advantage of bleeding, when these spots
are accompanied by an active pulse. A boy of Mr. John Carrol owes his
recovery from the small-pox to the loss of fifty ounces of blood, by five
bleedings, at a time when nearly every pock on his arms and legs had a
purple appearance. Louis XIV was bled five times in the small-pox, when
he was but thirteen years of age, and thereby probably saved from the
grave, to the great honour and emolument of the single physician who
urged it against the advice of all the other physicians of the court. Dr.
Cleghorn mentions a single case of the success of bleeding in the
petechial small-pox. His want of equal success afterwards, in similar
cases, was probably occasioned by his bleeding too sparingly, that is,
but three or four times.
Abscesses and sore breasts, which accompany or succeed fever, are no
objections to blood-letting, provided the pulse indicate the continuance
of inflammatory diathesis. They depend frequently upon the same state of
the system as livid effusions on the skin.
14. The long duration of fever. Inflammatory diathesis is often
protracted for many weeks, in the chronic state of fever. It, moreover,
frequently revives after having disappeared, from an accidental irritant
affecting some part of the body, particularly the lungs and brain. I bled
a young man of James Cameron, in the autumn of 1794, four times between
the 20th and 30th days of a chronic fever, in consequence of a pain in
the side, accompanied by a tense pulse, which suddenly came on after the
20th day of his disease. His blood was sizy. His pain and tense pulse
were subdued by the bleeding, and he recovered. I bled the late Dr. Prowl
twelve times, in a fever which continued thirty days, in the autumn of
the year 1800. I wish these cases to be attended to by young
practitioners. The pulmonary consumption is often the effect of a chronic
fever, terminating with fresh inflammatory symptoms, by effusions in the
lungs. It may easily be prevented by forgetting the number of the days of
our patient's fever, and treating the pulmonary affection as if it were a
recent complaint.
15. Tremors and slight convulsions in the limbs. Bark, wine, laudanum,
and musk are generally prescribed to remove these symptoms; but, to be
effectual, they should, in most cases, be preceded by the loss of a few
ounces of blood.
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