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.

    425/489 (page 409)
    days (fifth week of the disease) it progressed in a pretty continuous course (41 3° to 41-6° C. = 106*34° to io6-88°F, being attained). No observations w-erei taken during the last twenty-four hours. ^ XXV.—Acute Miliary Tuberculosis, &c. Acute mihary tuberculosis produces considerable alteration of temperature in the majority of cases, and this is in general so much the more, the more copiously and extensively the tubercle deposits are diff'ased, and the freer the person attacked was from other dis- orders, before the formation of the miliary granulations. When the miliary tubercles are scanty and localised, or in patients who are already greatly under the influence of other serious afl'ections (such as advanced pulmonary phthisis, pneumonia, or cerebral dis- ease), miliary tuberculosis sometimes fails to affect the temperature at all, or at least its influence is very slight. The course of the tempe- rature in miliary tuberculosis assumes the following leading types :— [a] A type resembling that of catarrh at its commencement, with an intense hectic fever later on; {^j) One resembling the course of the temperature in abdominal typhus ; (c) A type resembling the course of intermittent fever. These three different forms may succeed each other in one and the same case. The first form is met with in cases whose course is subacute. The illness, at least as regards its temperature relations, perfectly resembles, at its commencement, the course of a severe attack of influenza, or one of catarrhal pneumonia. Only the obstinate per- sistence of the fever excites suspicion. Gradually deep remissions, which almost descend to normal, occur, and alternate with febrile evening exacerbations of considerable height. Yet even by this behaviour of the temperature it is not possible to distinguish acute tuberculosis from an acute non-tuberculous phthisis; and so it may remain even up to the time of death; unless meningeal tubercles are developed, and the characteristic symptoms of basilar meningitis display themselves. 1 A case, under the care of Mr. de Morgan, is reported in the 'British Medical Journal' for April, 1870. The temperatures in this were not very liigli, and death took place on the 20th day with a temperature of i04'4° F, (= 40-2 C).