Clinical essays.

  • Richardson, Benjamin Ward, 1828-1896.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical essays. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    place early in life, and that the disease is non-recur- rent as a general rule, children over ten, and adults, are, to an extent proportionately large to the whole population, protected from the disease. Leaving the question of age, I find that great dif- ferences of opinion have been offered on the point, whether sex exerts any influence on the occurrence of scarlet fever ? The prevailing idea on this subject has been, and is, to the effect that females suffer most. Dr. Tweedie, whose opinion we all recognise, arguing on his own general experience, and on the results of an imperfect table, says, females are more subject to the disease than males: with great candour, how- ever, he repeats the opinion of Withering, that, in children, the numbers of sufferers are equal in both sexes; but, amongst adults, females suffer most. Fothergill, in writing of the malignant attack of scarlet fever which visited London in 1749, says, a greater number of girls have it than boys, more wo- men than men. Rayer affords similar testimony ; but Dr. Binns, in describing an epidemical scarlet fever which occurred in the Ackworth school, tries to show, by reference to a small but, as far as it goes, fair table of cases, that girls are less liable to the disease than boys. The 431 cases in my own possession, and to which I have before drawn attention, show an equality between the sufferers of different sexes. I could not, however, consider so few cases as 431 worthy of note for any definite conclusion derivable from them.