A new inquiry into the causes, symptoms, and cure, of putrid and inflammatory fevers : with an appendix on the hectic fever, and on the ulcerated and malignant sore throat. ... / By William Fordyce.

  • William Fordyce
Date:
1777
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new inquiry into the causes, symptoms, and cure, of putrid and inflammatory fevers : with an appendix on the hectic fever, and on the ulcerated and malignant sore throat. ... / By William Fordyce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Se&. 4.] B Y P U R G I N Q. 105 for which he quotes Dr. Sydenham’s autho¬ rity.* To this I anfwer, that neither this eminent Frenchman, nor our Engiifh Luminary, had at that time difcovered medicines which are found to fucceed in our practice. The knowledge of what thefe are, has been owing partly to accident, and partly to chymiftry, which, by teaching us the nature of bodies, and the method of analyfing them into their firft principles or component parts, have enabled us to judge of the effedts requifite to be produced on the humours of the body. There is not a more common fymptom in putrid fevers than a loofenefs. The debility and oppreffion whidi attend it, the irregularity and quicknefs of the * \ pulfe, the intervals of freedom from pain in the bowels, the fcetor of v/hat is difcharged, all mark its nature, and diftinguifh it eafily from the bloody flux or the inflammatory dyfentery. I mu ft add, that there is in general nothinglefs underftood than the proper management of the diarrhoea which attends putrid fevers, nor any fituatiog where more mifchief is done by checking the loofenefs, or more errors committed in the mode of doing it. We all know, that the whole fyftemof veins and arteries may be emptied in a very fhort time by the inteftines, the biliary dud, or by the mefenteric arteries j and that the materials of fevers depofited H 4 in * Sauvage’s Nofclog. Methodic. Caff. ii. Gen. h Sp, Morbor. p. 211.