The student's guide to the practice of medicine / by M. Charteris.

  • Charteris, M. (Matthew), 1840-1897.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The student's guide to the practice of medicine / by M. Charteris. 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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    prostrate the patient, and it is accompanied with thirst, loss of appetite, ]3ain in limbs, and burning heat of skin. The temperature for the first two days is usually 102° morning and 104° evening, and then it mounts to 105° and 107°. The pulse is weak and quick, and the skin moist. The tongue is thick and coated ; not parched and black as in typhus. The bowels are constipated. On the second day the liver and spleen, especially the latter, notably enlarge—not merely from day to day, but from morning to evening. There is little delirium. The high fever, the rapid loss of strength, the splenic enlargement, indicate a fever likely soon to be fatal; when, as suddenly as it came, on the fifth, sixth, or more usually on the seventh day, there is a crisis, with profuse sweating, rapid fall of tempera- ture, and complete improvement of all the symptoms, with entire decrease of the splenic enlargement. The only thing left is great languor, which sometimes may approach syncope. This interval of freedom lasts usually a week, when a relapse occurs, generally at night, with all the symptoms which characterised the previous attack. This attack is, however, shorter, lasting only three or five days. It suddenly ceases, leaving the patient weak and anaemic, and entailing a lingering recovery of from four or five to six weeks. As many as four or five relapses have been known. Prognosis and Coinplications. — In only two or three per cent of the cases is the fever fatal. Death may occur from the intensity of the fever, or from complications, as pneumonia or abscess of the spleen. ^ Post-mortem Appearances.—li death occur from the disease, the spleen may be found greatly enlarged, the capsule tense, the parenchyma soft and pulpy, with