A handbook of therapeutics / by Sydney Ringer.

  • Sydney Ringer
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handbook of therapeutics / by Sydney Ringer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/754 page 19
    THE SKIN. THE SKIN. The condition of the skin affords us a series of instructive symp- toms; but in this place I must restrict myself to speak only of a dry, a moist, and a profusely wet and sodden skin. In most fevers with persistently high temperature, the skin is hot, often pungently hot. Now, if we make the patient's skin comfort- ably moist, we shall considerably promote the comfort and well- being- of the patient. Small often-repeated doses of tincture of aconite or tartar emetic, or full doses repeated every three hours of spirit of mindererus, will induce perspiration. Aconite and tartar emetic are the most successful; in fevers without lung im- plication, aconite is best, but in catarrh, bronchitis, or pneumonia, tartar emetic is preferable. In many cases of diabetes and Bright's disease, it is very difficult to make the very dry skin perspire. The occurrence of sweating often suggests hints for treatment or assists the prognosis. The two chief causes of sweating are weakness and a fall in a febrile temperature, two causes often combined in the same indi- vidual in exhausting febrile diseases, as in phthisis. In a non-febrile patient, the readiness to perspire often indicates weakness, and even measures its amount; thus, in depressed health, a person finds that exertion, even slight exertion, or any excitement, causes too free sweating. A trainer knows well that a trainee is in bad condition when he perspires too freely. Again, in exhausting diseases, and during the weakness of con- valescence, slight exertion, or even sleep, produces sweating, often profuse. It must however, be borne in mind, that in sound health great differences in respect to the amount of sweating are met with in different individuals. A person returning from a residence in a hot climate where his skin has habitually acted very freely, finds on his return to a colder climate that, under slight exertion, he still continues to perspire very readily. Profuse sweating occurs during the sudden fall of a febrile temperature, as in the sweating stage of ague, or during the fall of temperature after a rigor in pyemia. Phthisical patients, too, in whom there occurs a great diurnal variation of temperature, rising to 1020 or higher at night and falling in the early morning hours commonly undergo with this fall a drenching perspiration. The amount of sweating in febrile cases depends on the extent of the c 2
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