swollen or infiltrated; the hamstring tendons or the tendo Achilles may
be sore and slightly swollen and the site of slight subcutaneous
hemorrhages. In some cases there is bone tenderness, pain on percussion
of the shins or of the sternum. These signs may be accompanied by, or
even precede, hemorrhages in the gums. The diagnosis of rheumatism in
infants indicates a lack of knowledge of pediatrics, as this disease is
hardly ever encountered in babies under a year and a half of age.
It is not always easy to differentiate scurvy from _purpura_. In either
disease the gums may be hemorrhagic and swollen, there may be scattered
subcutaneous hemorrhages and pains in the limbs. Occasionally, as in a
case seen a few years ago, we may be forced to resort to the dietetic
test. A close inquiry into the previous diet, however, a history of
previous attacks of purpura, the number, and especially the large size,
of the subcutaneous hemorrhages, and above all, the diminished number of
blood-platelets, should make diagnosis possible. In scurvy the platelets
are almost always over 300,000 per cubic millimetre, whereas in purpura
they are reduced to less than 200,000.
In the army it may be difficult to distinguish scurvy from _beriberi_,
especially if they occur side by side as in the recent English campaign
in Mesopotamia. There may be a combination of the two diseases, a
picture similar to ship-beriberi, regarded by Nocht as a hybrid of these
diseases. The diagnosis is rendered more difficult, as at times scurvy
is associated with signs of neuritis. We shall have to depend on the
involvement of the gums and the hemorrhages in scurvy, and on the
hyperæsthesia, paræsthesia, and anæsthesia in beriberi; marked edema
points to the latter disease.
We have thus far had in mind frank and outspoken cases of scurvy. When
we come to consider latent or early cases, the diagnosis is more
difficult and may have to be merely tentative. All that need be added,
in view of the clinical picture sketched above, is that this condition
should not be forgotten in treating adults who have malaise and
indefinite "rheumatic" pains and, more particularly, in relation to
infants who fail to gain, whose appetite is capricious, whose
disposition has become fretful and who have developed the sallow
scorbutic complexion. This warning is particularly opportune at present
in the United States, where pasteurized milk is fed so extensively to
infants, and an antiscorbutic food is not always given.
In addition to the symptoms just enumerated, tenderness of the bones,
especially of the distal ends of the femora, should be sought for, the
urine should be examined carefully for red blood-cells, and perhaps the
ends of the long bones radiographed for "the white line" of Fraenkel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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