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.

    22/489 (page 6)
    proi^rrs^. Of tliesc \vc may mention diphtlicria, dysentery, peri- carditis, peritonitis, aente and chronic snppurntions (abscesses), and phthisis. ^ 1 :}.—The conrsc of the teinperatiirc in many special diseases almost invariably folhnvs a single ty|)ical form [monotj/picol or uni/onn diseases). Other maladies, according to their intensity, or from other special causes, follow varions types of t(Mnperature {mnUiform, or pleoliipic diseases). The stndy of thermometry can define these variations of dis- ease far more accnrately than has vet been done, and thus enable us to discover and dilTercntiatc varying types of the same disease. Smallpox, enteric fever, scarlatina, pneumonia, and malarious fever, are diseases which occasionally assume the multiform type [j^Ieo- iypis))}), although as a rule they decidedly follow a single pure type. Those diseases which usually exhibit only an approximatively typical course of temperature, show still greater tendencies to assume a multiplicity of ill-defined types. § T4.—Any disease, however fixed may be its typical form, may exhibit deviations from this in special cases [irregularities.] They are determined by more or less lasting individual peculiarities and circumstances (idiosyncrasies), by external conditions, or therapeutical influences, whether favorable or unfavorable, and by the supervention of complications. These irregularities are circumscribed within certain hmits, and their form and extent are more or less determinate. By means of the thermometer it will be possible to learn more of these irregularities than is yet known, to assign them to their proper causes, and give them their due weight in prognosis. And it will help us better to fix the time when a patient's disease, which has appeared to run an irregular course^ reassumes a typical form. § 15-—-^ single ohservation of an abnormal temjierature, how- ever great, or however small the deviation from the normal mav be, is not L)j itself conclusive as to the kind of disease from which the patient suffers. All we learn from it is— 1. That the patient is really bodily ill. 2. TThen there is considerable elevation of temperature^ we know that there is fever.