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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    interval of sometimes only imi)erfect freedom from fever. With a fresh development of aortic valvular iiisufliciency througli endocar- ditis, very considerable elevations of temperature sometimes occur late in the disease; whilst mitral insufficiency appears to have far less effect on the temperature. (c) Sometimes, however, even during the fresh course, or relapse of acute rheumatism, more or less considerable rise of tempera- ture is brought about by complications. The supervention of pneu- monia most certainly, although not invariably, raises the temperature, yet without impressing on the course the characteristic type of pneumonia.^ The remaining complications (pericarditis, endocar- ditis, bronchitis, urticaria, miliaria, &c.), only exceptionally produce this inflammatory rise of temperature, either when they are very severe, or perhaps on account of individual predisposition, or per- haps according to some special form of the complicating inflam- mation. § 6. When the disease becomes fixed in a joint or a bone, the articular rheumatism may hang about for a very long time, through recrudescence of the process or through successive complications. Such ohst'inate attacks are not very frequent amongst my hos- pital patients. I think, however, that I am not wrong in saying that they occur much more frequently in private practice. Obstinate rheumatism with fixed or changing and successive localisations some- times displays great intensity, but sometimes produces only very slight symptoms, differences which are very clearly indicated in the course of the temperature. On the other hand, severe incidents occur now and then without corresponding elevations of tempe- rature. § 7. Amongst the y^ifa^ aflPections which accompany acute rheu- matism, or have rheumatoid symptoms, we may notice two essen- tially different courses, in which there is a corresponding difference in the course of the temperature. [a) In the one class of cases death occurs from ^ fixed localisa- tion, particularly from heart affections or their results, sometimes in immediate sequence to the rheumatic affections of the joints, and sometimes not till after their recovery. The course of the tempera- * This is one of those little touches so true lo nature, as to sliow clearly that the author draws from life, aud uot merely from his own imagiuation.—[Tuaxs.]