Lectures on the eruptive fevers : as now in the course of delivery at St. Thomas's hospital, in London / by George Gregory.
- George Gregory
- Date:
- 1851
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the eruptive fevers : as now in the course of delivery at St. Thomas's hospital, in London / by George Gregory. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![In the case of this symmetrical disposition of disease, we are all, I suspect, pretty much in the same state as tlie Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who found out that he had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it. We knew the facts, but we had never reasoned concerning them. The chief illustrations of the symmetry of disease are to be found in the phenomena of rheumatism, in the mode of decay of the teeth, in the growth of certain tumors; but, better than all, in the aspect of exanthe- matic eruption. In the corymbose form of small pox, the patches, or corymbi, will be found to correspond on the two sides of the body in the most singular man- ner. Once I had a patient at the Small Pox Hospital, who exhibited confluence in the highest possible degree on each hand and wrist, but in no other part of her body. [For striking illustrations of the symmetrical arrangement which patches of eruption assume, with many curious facts and much ingenious reasoning on the subject, see Paper on the subject by Mr. James Paget, and especially a more extended one by Dr. William Budd, in Medico- Chirurg. Transactions, vol. 25.] In all the exanthemata, the parts of the body nearest the centre of circulation are more aflected than those at a distance. This is strikingly exemplified in the erup- tion of post-vaccine small pox, which is often confluent on the face, and wholly undeveloped on the extremities. In general, the distinctive characters of exanthema- toas eruption are strongly marked, but difficulties in diagnosis do occur. Small pox is sometimes mistaken for chicken pox. Measles is not always readily distin- guished from lichen. When the exanthemata first invaded the world, their identity was universally believed. Rhazes and Avi-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21055257_0034.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
