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
The whole body was affected, in many cases, with a morbid sensibility, or
what has been called supersensation, so that patients complained of pain
upon being touched, when they were moved in their beds. This extreme
sensibility was general in parts to which blisters had been applied. It
continued through every stage of the disease. Dr. Physick informed me,
that he observed it in a man two hours before he died. In this man there
was an absence of pulse, and a coldness of his extremities. Upon touching
his wrist, he cried out, as if he felt great pain.
V. A redness in the eyes was a general symptom. I saw few recoveries
where this redness was not removed.
A discharge of matter from one ear relieved Mr. J. C. Warren from a
distressing pulsation of the arteries in his head.
VI. Glandular swellings occurred in several instances. Two cases of them
came under my notice. They both terminated favourably.
VII. The blood had its usual appearances in this disease. In the yellow
fever which prevailed at the same time in Boston, Dr. Rand says the
blood was sizy in but one out of a hundred cases.
The forms of the fever were nearly similar to those which have been
described in the year 1797. I saw several cases in which the disease
appeared in the form of a tertian fever. In one of them it terminated in
death.
The system, in many cases, was prostrated below the point of inflammatory
re-action. These were called, by some practitioners, typhous fevers. It
was the most dangerous and fatal form of the disease. Its frequent
occurrence gave occasion to a remark, that our epidemic resembled the
yellow fever of the West-Indies, much more than the fevers of 1793 and
1797.
I attended two patients in whom the disease was protracted nearly to the
30th day. They both recovered.
Dr. Francis Sayre informed me, that he saw a child, in which the morbid
affection of the wind-pipe, called cynanche trachealis, appeared with all
the usual symptoms of yellow fever.
I attended one case in which the force of the disease was weakened, in
its first stage, by a profuse hæmorrhage from the bowels. This hæmorrhage
was followed by a bloody diarrh[oe]a, which continued for four or five
weeks.
Persons of all ages and colours were affected by this fever. I saw a case
of it in a child of six months old. In the blacks, it was attended with
less violence and mortality than in white people. It affected many
persons who had previously had it.
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