Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author — John Shaqi
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
II. The whole alimentary canal was much affected in most cases.
Costiveness and a vomiting were general. The alvine discharges were
occasionally green, dark-coloured, black, and natural. The black vomiting
was more common this year than in former years, in all the forms of the
fever. It was sometimes suspended for several days before death, and
hopes were entertained of a recovery of patients in whom it had
appeared. In a boy, at the city hospital, it ceased ten days before he
died. It was sometimes succeeded by delirium or coma, but it more
commonly left the patient free of pain, and in the possession of all the
faculties of his mind.
III. The tongue was by no means an index of the state of the fever, as in
the years 1793 and 1797. I saw several deaths, attended with a black
vomiting, in which the tongue retained a natural appearance. This
phenomenon at first deceived me. I ascribed it to such a concentration of
the disease in the stomach and other vital parts, as to prevent its
diffusing itself through the external parts of the system. We observe the
effects of the same cause in a natural state of the skin, and in a
natural appearance of the urine, in the most malignant forms of this
fever.
IV. In the nervous system, the disease appeared with several new
symptoms. A relation of Peter Field attempted to bite his attendants in
the delirium of his fever, just before he died.
I attended a young woman at Mrs. Easby's, who started every time I
touched her pulse. Loud talking, or a question suddenly proposed to her,
produced the same convulsive motion. She retained her reason during the
whole of her illness, and was cured by bleeding and a salivation.
Hiccup was a common symptom. I saw but two patients recover who had it.
In one of them, Dr. Hedges, it came on after the sixth day of the fever,
and continued, without any other symptom of disease, for four or five
days.
I lost a patient who complained of no pain but in the calves of his legs.
Dr. Physick lost a girl, in the city hospital, who complained only of
pains in her toes. Her stomach discovered, after death, strong marks of
inflammation.
Many people passed through every stage of the disease, without uttering a
complaint of pain of any kind.
An uncommon stiffness in the limbs preceded death a few hours, in several
cases. This stiffness ceased, in one of Dr. Physick's patients,
immediately after death, but returned as soon as he became cold.
An obstinate wakefulness continued through the whole of the disease in
Dr. Leib. It was common during the convalescence, in many cases.
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