On the temperature in diseases : a manual of medical thermometry.

  • Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the temperature in diseases : a manual of medical thermometry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto.

    21/489 (page 5)
    ease [Quantity, type, and relation], although often modified by accidental influences, are commonly determined hij the nature of the disease: and, indeed, the more typical and well-developed the dis- eased processes are, the more certainly is this tlie case. Many separate kinds of disease correspond to loell-marhed ti/pes of altered temperature. These answer to well-known varieties of disease. In opposition to these there are certain (7(///;/(?«^or irregular forms of disease, in which the temperature also is irregular. The contrast between typical and atypical forms is, however, not always sharply defined, so that many affections may be considered as standing on a sort of neutral grouiid, between typical and ill-defined forms. True ti/p'jcal states of disease, that is, those which almost inva- riably show more or less clearly a characteristic type, and in which there is seldom if ever a complete deviation from the typical form, are illustrated by enteric fever (abdominal typhus), true exanthematic typhus, and apparently by relapsing fever, smallpox, measles, and scarlatina, primary (croupous or lobar) pneumonia, and recent malarious fevers. The group of apiiroxhriativelij typical forms of disease, in which, indeed, characteristic types may be certainly recognised in the abstract, but which, although in certain stages they exhibit great regularity, yet occasionally deviate very widely from the typical, and almost constantly display a great breadth and laxity of behaviour is less easily defined. Yet we may include under it febricula, pyremia, and septicaemia, varicella and rubeola notha, facial erysipelas, acute catarrhal inflammation, tonsillitis (cynanche tonsillaris), acute rheu- matism (rheumatic fever), basilar meningitis, and meningitis of the superior convolutions; cerebro-spinal meningitis, parotitis (mumps), pleurisy, acute tuberculosis, fatal neuroses in their last stages, and the trichina disease. Another groiip) is formed by those diseases which in certain cir- cumstances conform to a regular type, but which generally run their course without fever: when, however, fever supervenes a regular type is generally displayed. To this group cholera, acute phosphorus- poisoning, acute general fatty degeneration, and syphilis especial!v belong.^ Even diseases which we are forced to include under the designation of atypical or irregular do occasionally, in exce])- tional cases, show a close approximation to typical forms in their ^ Under tliese lieadiugs some observations will be made in llie notes, which will, I belipve, tend to show that tliis gronp is probably superfluous.—[Traxs.]