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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    middle of a moderate course of fever, or even after return to a sub- febrile, or fever-free condition, there often occurs a more or less considerable rise.of temperature (even a couple of degrees or so, = y&^ F.), wliich is sometimes quite ephemeral, sometimes com- pensates itself after a day or two, or sometimes lasts rather longer. This fresh rise is not always dependent on fresh increase of the joint affection, nor yet on the occurrence of complications. It is especially difficult to find an explanation for the cases of very brief inter- current elevations of temperature, which only last one day or so : and this short fever paroxysm, of which the patient is often quite uncon- scious, has no influence at all upon the regular and proper termina- tion of the case. More slowly developing, and longer lasting elevations of temperature may be associated with a relapse in all the symptoms. Those cases may be classed as apparent recrudescence, in which the temperature has been artificially depressed at the height of the disease, by medicine (such as Digitalis and Aconite), and has risen again when the influence of the medicine is exhausted, or when it is left off. § 5. Complications, especially pericarditis and endocarditis, in many cases have no effect at all on the course of the fever [see notes to pp. 393 and 395]. They sometimes occur without ele- vating the temperature even the tenth of a degree, or without at all affecting its downward progress. In other cases, however, the opposite is the case, and the course may be modified as follows: {a) The course of the temperature during the fastigiam and during recovery may, indeed, be unaffected, but during convalescence the temperature remains in a somewhat higher plane than is commonly the case with rheumatic convalescents, and sometimes in the further course of convalescence rises somewhat higher still; this occurs occasionally in pericarditis and in endocarditis, when this has pro- duced valvular mischief. It is sometimes a considerable time before the temperature descends from this elevated platform (Niveau). {h) Associated with this, we find after actual recovery from the acute disease a protracted sub-febrile or actually febrile condition: sometimes in the temporary stage, paroxysms of fever, lasting several days, may set in. These sometimes consist of aberrant secondary fever, dependant pericarditis, made up of several isolated febrile ex- peclilions of a week or more, which are only separated by a brief