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.

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    ]Ic(/eu-il--ich says lie should have suppressed, were it not that it ajipeared to him a glaring instance in proof of the miserable state of medicine in England !):— Though I am far from thinking that fever, properly so called, consists merely of a series of phenomena originating in a morbid nccumulation of heat in the system, yet this symptom evidently occurs more or less early in that disease,^' (p. 624), and further, that some advantages are to be obtained from a strict attention to tlie state of the l^eat in fever, and to the proper function of the perspiration, this volume affords, if I do not deceive myself, impor- tant proofs. A careful attention to the changes of the animal heat, and to the state of those functions on which it depends, and by which it is regulated, though more requisite in febrile diseases, perhaps, than in others, is however of importance throughout the whole circle of diseases^' (p. 631). Although Cnrrie's work ran through several editions in England, and was very favorably reviewed, yet it influenced his contemporaries and countrymen but httle. Its influence in Germany was still slighter. Mkhaeliis translation of the first part fell almost still-born from the press, and Ilegeioitsch, who undertook to translate the second part, complained that the first part was almost unknown amongst German medical men. A similar fate befell himself, as regards his share in the translation, and it was not till half a century later that Hufeland again rescued Curriers work for a brief space from the oblivion into which it had fallen. § 5-—Whilst practical men in various countries, with the excep- tion of those above named, concerned themselves but little with the temperature of the sick, physiologists for the most part were quite satisfied with the chemical theory of warmth-production, as explained by Lavoisier. It is true there were one or two exceptions, as Vacca BerlingJiieyi{e%?imQ dellateoriadiCrawford'^), Buntzen, and others. But the experiments of Coleman (' Dissertation on suspended respiration,' 1791), and (Saimy ('Recherches sur la physique des animaux hybernans,^ 1808) adduced some interesting facts which appeared to contradict this chemical theory. 8ir Benjamin Brodie, in 1811, entered the Hsts as an opponent of the theory of the production of warmth by respiratory processes (see his paper on '' Some physiological researches respecting the influence of the brain on the action of the heart, and on generation of animal heat,'' 'Philosophical Transactions,' tSit, p. 36, and also Further