Medical reports, on the effects of water, cold and warm : as a remedy in fever and other diseases, whether applied to the surface of the body, or used internally / by James Currie.

James Currie

Date:: 1805

Credit: Medical reports, on the effects of water, cold and warm : as a remedy in fever and other diseases, whether applied to the surface of the body, or used internally / by James Currie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$Within the space of six years immediately preceding the period when it occurred, I had seen two instances of fever, in which the con- comitant symptoms were nearly similar to those that appeared in James Money's case. In each of them, the excitability of certain of the organs of sense was greatly encreased; and in each, that singular libration, the alter- nate elevation and depression of mind, which is certainly one of the most curious and may, probably, be a necessary quality in the charac- ter of this modification of fever, existed in ,a ■ more or less obvious degree. In both instan- ces the patients were healthy, robust young men, of dispositions somewhat grave, and in- clined to melancholy; and like Money, they • had, previously to the commencement of their .'■ illness, suffered considerably from mental anxiety and bodily fatigue. Their disease was also dis- tinctly traceable to contagion. ■ It was treated as a typhus ; that is to say, an emetic was pre- M scribed in the first instance, and in the subsequent periods, wine and bark, with the sulphuric acid and opium ; and blistering plasters were prescribed, according to the state of the hving powers at the time. In both cases, the event was unfortunate, and therefore in ]\Ioney's case, I was led to form and to pronounce unfavourable prognostics. The general powers of cold affusion were not indeed unknown$