Dangerous infectious diseases / by Francis Vacher.

  • Vacher, Francis, 1843-1914
Date:
[1897]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dangerous infectious diseases / by Francis Vacher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    recognised as such within recent years. After inception the disease is latent from about two to five days. The first symptoms are rigors or shivering, pain in the side or over the stomach, and fever. Sometimes the pain is quickly followed by diarrhoea and vomiting. Commonly on the second day there is pleuro-pneumonia on one side or both sides, followed by delirium. Cases are often fatal in three or four days. The crisis may be expected in a week or ten days, but this may be followed in a few days by .a relapse. This disease is not primarily an affection of the lungs, but a fever of which the pleuro- pneumonia is a symptom, and the constitutional disturbance is usually out of all proportion to the local disease. Debilitated persons, intemperate persons, the aged, and all living among squalid surroundings appear to be specially liable to attack and to have the disease severely. Epidemic pneumonia may be considered infectious from the onset of the disease till the lung disease is recovered from, and the patient ceases to expectorate — say three weeks or more. A person exposed to infection, after a week's •quarantine is safe. Had this disease been more common, or had it been more frequently recognised, it is probable it would have been included in the diseases ordinarily required to be notified ; but little was known of epidemic pneumonia till the Middlesbrough epidemic was investigated and reported on, and this was only just before the
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