Remarks on the changes which are supposed to have taken place in the type of continued fever / by Charles Murchison.

  • Murchison, Charles, 1830-1879.
Date:
[1858]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the changes which are supposed to have taken place in the type of continued fever / by Charles Murchison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    REMARKS ON THE CHANGES WHICH ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN THE TYPE OF CONTINUED FEVER By CHARLES MURCHISON, M.D., L.R.C.P., ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN TO KING’S COLLEGE HOSPITAL AND TO THE LONDON FEVER HOSPITAL. [REPRINTED PROM THE EDINBURGH MEDICAL JOURNAL, AUGUST 1858.] It is not my object, in this paper, to enter into any discussion concern¬ ing the general question of changes of type in disease. I merely wish to call attention to one or two circumstances, which, in my opinion, must modify in a very great degree the conclusions which have been drawn by Dr Christison, in a very valuable paper read by him before the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, and published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal for January of the present year. One of the main arguments, if not the principal one, urged by Dr Christison in favour of a change in the type of fever is, that in the epidemic of 1817-19, the practice of bleeding largely, so far from being injurious, as it would undoubtedly be in the fever which of late years has been most prevalent, was followed by the most favourable results. Thus he remarks, after speaking of drawing u a legitimate allowance of thirty ounces (of blood) in allu And let it be remembered that we did by no means slay our patients by such blood-thirstiness. On the contrary, the mortality from the whole forms of fever collectively in that epidemic, did not exceed 1 in 22 at any period, and was reduced to 1 in 30 as the epidemic spread, and the remedy became more and more familiar.”1 It is well known, however, and acknowledged by Dr Christison himself, that the fever which characterised this epidemic was that which is now familiar to many members of the profession under the designation of Relapsing Fever, and which was probably included in the synocha