Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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America Messi'S. Gerliard and Pennock^ in a paper published by Dr. Gerliard in the ' American Journal of Medical Science ' in 1837, ^^''^^ described all the more important points of difference^ and pei'haps they have the strongest claims to be considered the first to have clearly proved the complete distinction between the two diseases. Nevertheless^ all the leading facts and conclusions had been established before by gradual steps. The distinction between the slow nervous fever and the putrid jail fever had been observed in England since early in the eighteenth century. In the middle of the century De Haen described accurately the rose rash of typhoid. And Pringle, in his controversy with him^ pointed out its difference from the petechial rash of the jail fevers, and also the different class of persons liable to be affected by the two forms. In 1810 Hildenbrand, who regarded the two diseases as entirely distinct, showed how they differed in contagious properties. The essential lesions of typhoid fever were gradually established by ifrench pathologists, especially Bretonneau, who invented the term dothienenteritis, though he regarded the disease as a specific fever, and not as Brous- sais had done, a mere inflammatory affection. In 1829 Louis gave the name of typhoid to the dothienenteritis of Breton- neau, but in France it was generally regarded as identical with the typhus of England, and in England dothienen- teritis as an occasional complication of typhus. In 1835 Peebles, who was familiar with the contagious typhus of Italy, pointed out its characteristic rash to Dr. Perry, of G-lasgow, Dr. Stewart being present, and from this time Dr. Perry taught the difference between contagious typhus and dothienenteritis, and he appears to have been the first in this country to have done so ; though in his paper, published in 1836, he does not seem to havia regarded dothien- enteritis as a specific fever accompanied by a rash of its own, but as an affection which might complicate other diseases as 15