Five dissertations on fever / by George Fordyce.

  • Fordyce, George, 1736-1802.
Date:
1815
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Five dissertations on fever / by George Fordyce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    17/454
    commonly, in the middle of fevers, in which the patient, during the course of the disease, is never free from fever. Another person, applying Ms hand to the body of a person afflict- ed with fever, feels a part of the body hot sometimes, when the pa- tient himself feels it cold : sometimes it may be felt to change from hot to cold in almost an instant, or from cold to hot in the same pe- riod of time ; and this by no means consonant, either to the feel of the person afflicted or to the thermometer. Heat, therefore, considering it in any way that it can be meas- ured, cannot be taken as a pathognomic symptom of fever ; (that is, an appearance which always takes place when a fever is present, and is always absent when a fever is absent.) It will hardly be thought necessary here to consider heat in the body, which is not shown by any of those measures which I have pointed out; and which has lately been conceived to exist in matter, without being sensible, by producing expansion of solids, fluids or vapors, or sensible to the feelings of mankind or other animals. Some authors and practitioners have conceived, that cold follow- ed by heat constituted a fever ; but every man who has been conver- sant with this disease, and has attended to its attacks, knows per- fectly that it often begins without any cold, measured either by the thermometer, the sensation of the patient, or feel of a by-stander. A less degree of heat measured by the thermometer, the feel of the patient, or of a by-stander, we call cold. In some cases of fever the author has measured the heat, at the first approach of an at- tack, in all these ways, and very frequently throughout the disease; without ever finding a greater degree of cold than the ordinary heat of the bodv, from the first beginning, till the end of the disease. This will be undoubtedly confirmed by the observation of practi- tioners and relations of authors. On the other hand, cold, considered in the sense the author has explained, has frequently taken place, according to all the above measures, in diseases, which no practitioner has ever considered as fever : in hysteric affection for instance. Cold therefore cannot be deemed a pathognomic symptom of fever. Frequency of the pulse has been more generally considered as a pathognomic symptom of fever. The pulse, (that is to say, the con- traction and relaxation of the arteries, which is readily felt in any arterv lying near the skin, especially if it be only covered by the