A treatise on the venereal disease / By John Hunter. With an introduction and commentary, by Joseph Adams.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the venereal disease / By John Hunter. With an introduction and commentary, by Joseph Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/612 (page 5)
    Sect. 1.] of the paper are confused, from the difficulty the au- thor found in tracing the cause constantly to suppura- tion. Hence he _ describes the various symptomatic fe- vers as making different forms of the hectic. Thus the shivering from the first forma- tion of matter, and the high feverish irritation sometimes consequent on a wounded ten- don, are all included in the hectic, which would be rea- sonable enough, if the symp- tomatic fever always became hectic, which we shall pre- sentiy see is not the case. Mr. Hunter, though he con- siders both as the effect of sympathy, yet distinguishes them as arising from dif- ferent causes, and exhibiting different phenomena. The symptomatic fever is usually acute, and arises from, or is only a symptom of, some acute local injury, which, throughout all its whether in its commence- ment or its progress to .sup- puration, is attended with shivering and consequent fe- ver. Sydenham has well mark- ed these stages in small pox. They occur in every com- mon abscess, if the progress is rapid. Hectic, or (if we translate the word) habitual* fever, is less acute than the symptoma- tic, but more permanent in its returns. As it almost al- ways attends phtbisis pulmo- nalis, and large incurable abscesses, it was supposed to arise from the absorption of matter. This error might easily have been removed by reflecting, that in large ab- scesses matter is sometimes absorbed without injury to the constitution. Suppuration is one of the curative pro- cesses of nature, in parts which cannot return to their original actions, and like other new actions is usually ushered in by shivering, and consequent fever. But where suppuration is unattended with inflamma- tion, the constitution is little affected, so that no shivering or consequent fever arises. Thus in the psoas abscess, whilst it is continually enlarg- ing by an increase of matter, or by fresh suppurations, the constitution is very little af- fected, and in the lungs large tubercles are formed, which suppurate, and whilst the mat- ter remains in the capsules, the constitution only suffers from the loss of so much lung. But as soon as the abscess is opened by nature or art, or the matter of tubercles finds which we vernacularize habit.