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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    with, and the only moderations of the course which occur arC; transitive, deceptive, and imperfect. Such deceptive remissions occur more especially in the proagnostic period, whilst on the very day of death the temperature regularly rises considerably. The course of the temperature fashions itself thus when the centres of suppuration are not too numerous, but a complexity of grave disorders exists, corresponding to the jaundice. In the cases which end fatally without multiple centres of sup- ])uration, and without jaundice, the disease at first runs its course like a very severe articular rheumatism. A descending direction may even have set in as regards the temperature, but suspicious nervous symptoms show themselves simultaneously. These suddenly arise with very rapid fresh increase of temperature, and in the briefest time reach most extreme degrees, so that death occurs with hyperpyretic temperatures, whilst no anatomical lesion in the brain can be discovered in the corpse, or only very moderate degrees of meningitis. Post-mortem elevations of temperature may be met with. [See papers by Drs. Herbert Davies, Puller, Gull, Sutton, and E.Long Fox, in the 'London Hospital Pieports,' 'Guy's Hospital Reports,' and 'Medical Journals'for iSyo, passim. Dr. Wilson Pox ('Lancet,' July and, 1870) gives two cases with pra:- mortem temperatures of 110° and iio'8°, and Dr. E. B. Baxter has kindly given me notes of a case of acute rheumatism under Dr. DufBn's care, whose temperature in dying was 111° Pahr. (43*9° C). Dr. Edwin Long Pox (in one of a series of valuable papers in the 'Medical Times and Gazette' for 1870) also says that death often occurs when the temperature reaches 105°, but not invariably (the latter statement I can confirm from notes of several cases). He fur- ther observes that high temperatures usually correspond with a high pulse, but an evening temperature of 103° Pahr. may go with a pulse of 84° or 90°. The urine is generally acid with high temperature, but it may be alkaline. There may be profuse sweating with temperature of 103° and 1044-°Pahr., and sudamina also. He thinks that blisters do not diminisb the temperature; but many of Dr. Herbert Davies' cases lead to an opposite conclusion, especially those in which blisters were applied after recrudescence.—Teans.] [See the curves in Lithographs at the end, Table VII].