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.

    406/489 (page 390)
    to me tliat three special varieties of the fever course can be particu- larly distinguished. (a) In some voy severe and rapidly fatal cases, the temperature displays a similar course to that of meningitis of ihc convexity. Though not invariably very high at the bcgiiuiing of the disease, it reaches very striking heights in the briefest time, which persist con- tinuously for some days, and rise just near death, and in the very moment of death to quite unusual degrees (42° C. (io76° P.), and more; and in one case 4375° C. (11075° ^0 ^ ^yig)^ ^^^ ™^y even rise some tenths higher after death (three cjuartcrs of an hour after death in the case just mentioned, it was 44* 16° C. = 111*48° V.). There were also some fatal cases, in which the temperature for some time was very moderate, and rose considerably all at once just near the end of the disease. {d) On the other hand, relatively mild cases, exhibit only a fever of short duration, although there are sometimes considerable eleva- tions of temperature (which contrast with the quiet pulse), and the course is generally discontinuous. Recovery does not take place by decided crisis, but generally happens rather with remittent defer- vescence [lysis]: and the pulse then begins to quicken just as the temperature has become normal, or nearly so. Here and there cases occur, which after defervescing, and apparently almost recovering, relapse all at once, with a rapid rise of temperature, and run a course like the cases marked {a). (c) In contrast to these brief courses of fever with either very severe or slight character, we find cases which are more or less pro- iracted, with a corresponding course as to the fever. The height of the temperature in these may be very varied, and indeed exhibit manifold changes in the very same case, though indeed this chiefly depends upon the varied complications which supervene, in the shape of bronchial, pulmonary and intestinal affections, and affections of serous membranes. Sometimes the fever has the same duration, and the exacerbations of temperature the same height as those of typhoid fever, and its curves when projected may greatly resemble the latter; but there is not the regularity of abdominal typhus, and at the best the course is only that of the amphibolic period of that disease, or hke that which occurs in very irregular forms of it. Tluctuations of considerable extent, apparent improvements, and fresh and sudden rises of tern-