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.

    407/489 (page 391)
    perature are met with. Sometimes the course resembles the fever of phthisical patients. Defervescence may,occur rapidly^ but is^ however, for the most part protracted [by lysis]. With a fatal termination, we may get either a rising or falling' temperature^ according to the kind of case, and the various imme- diate causes of death. I have related at some length a very remark- able case, in which both the course of the temperature and the other symptoms rendered the diagnosis doubtful for a long time, whether we had to do with abdominal typhus or cerebro-spinal meningitis, in the ' Archiv der Heilkunde/ vi, 371. Compare also my oivn publications (1864,' Archiv der Heilkunde/ v_,4i7, and 1865, ibid., vi, 368), also Ziemssen and Hess (1865, in the ' Deutschen Archiv fiir Klinisch Medicin,' i, 7 2 and 346), and Mannhopf (' liber Meningitis cerebro-spin. epidem.,' 1866). See lithographs, Table YI. See also ' New Sydenham Society's Biennial Retrospect of Medi- cine for 1865-6 ' (pp. ^^)-^%, &c.), and articles in Hussell Ecynolds' ^ System of Medicine,' and Aitken's ' Theory and Practice of Medicine,' and the Supplemental Bibliography at the end. XVIII.—Pleurisy, Endocarditis, Pericarditis, and Peritonitis. Inflammations of the serous membranes of the chest and abdo- men exhibit, in the great majority of cases, perfect absence of any typical character. They may run their course without any elevation of temperature, for if they are occasionally found with high temperature, at another time we find them quite free from fever. If they are associated with any other febrile diseases, they very often effect no change in the temperature course, or only cause it to be irregular, without any characteristic form. They generally retard the defervescence of the primary disease, making it protracted and imperfect, and they have a share in the fresh elevations of tempera- ture which occur at a later date. They may, however, themselves induce the temperature to rise, sometimes moderately, at other times to considerable heights.