On the temperature in diseases : a manual of medical thermometry.

  • Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich
Date:
1871
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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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    rapidly fatal attacks, similar cousidcrablc rises of temperature are met with (40° C. = 104° F., and even more) ; but the intervening remissions are less, or if tliey occur, less regular; sometimes they are actually less in depth, and sometimes wholly absent. The fever observes no order in its course. The remissions of temperature are deceptive, and are by no means signs of a favorable termination. On the course of the temperature in luetic (syphilitic) marasmus see Marasmus.^ XXIV.—Glanders and Parcy. I can only find one case of observations of temperature in glanders in the human subject (Goldschmidt^s Giessen Thesis, 1866). This is somewhat interesting. He remarks (from observations commenced in the fourteenth day of the disease) that the fever displays a remit- tent course, which is of moderate severity at its commencement, from the nineteenth day of the disease it rose gradually, zig-zag fashion, and reached highly febrile degrees; from the twenty-fifth day forward it never sank below 40° C. (104° T.), and in the last few * The author's observations in the text, and those of Dr. T. E. Guntz, in Das syphilitische Fieber, Kiichennieister and Pross' Zeitschrift f. Medicin, Chirurgie and Geburtshilfe. N. Folge iv, 1865, p. 192) (for a reference to which I have to thank Br. Christian Bduviler), as well as the cases of syphilitic rheumatism in Dr. Garrod's and his own practice reported by Dr. DufQh, at p. 81 of the 2iid vol. of the ' Clinical Society's Transactions ;' and the Report of the Committee on Temperature in Syphilis, at page 170, in the 3rd vol. of the ' Transactions ' of the same society, may be referred to along with the diagrarii specially added to this English edition, as tending to prove that some forms at least of constitutional syphilis, particularly those resembling rheu- matism, are at least as typical as most fevers. I have to return special thanks to Dr. E. B. Baxter for first directing my attention to this subject, and for kindly lending me his own notes and charts of several cases, which have enabled me to present an ideal chart (all the temperatures of which, however, are real) compiled from his careful observations, which in one case at least extended over more than two months. Besides showing the great fluctuations of temperature met with in these cases, the figure shows the striking effect of 10 gr. doses of Iodide of Potassium, in reducing the temperature—an improve- ment which coincided in some of the cases with a remarkable and striking gain in weight (20 lb. in fourteen days in one case). See also Lancereaux on Syphilis, Xew Sydenham Society's Translations, by Dr. Whitley, vol. i, p. 125.—[Thaxs.]