Historical notices, designed to illustrate the question whether typhus ought to be classed among the exanthematous fevers / [Charles West].

  • Charles West
Date:
[1840]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Historical notices, designed to illustrate the question whether typhus ought to be classed among the exanthematous fevers / [Charles West]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    destroyed 30,000 men in London in the year 1499, the King and court flying the city, and taking refuge at Calais; and that in the year 1502, the Viceroy of Sicily was so alarmed at the prevalence of the plague in Barcelona, that he closed his ports against all vessels from that city. In the year 1505, the first epidemic of petechial fever prevailed in Italy, and in the following year Eng¬ land was ravaged for the second time by sweating-sickness; the same circumstances which in England and other northern coun¬ tries gave rise to sweating-sickness, producing petechial fever in the south of Europe.* * * § The epidemics of 1528—9 afforded a striking illustration of this fact, and are far from being a solitary instance of pestilence assuming very dissimilar forms in countries which differed from each other in soil or climate. Fracastorius was only 22 years old in 1505; the description which he gives of petechial fever refers, therefore, more particu¬ larly to the epidemic of the year 1528, when the disease seems to have been more severe than on its first appearance in Italy. It prevailed over the whole of Italy, and was, in all probability, the pestilence which almost annihilated the French army before Naples, *f- although this cannot be affirmed with certainty ; for Fallopiusl speaks of bubo occurring as a symptom of the distem¬ per in some of his father's servants at Modena. Probably petechial fever and plague occurred together. It was at Verona that Fracas- torius§ observed the disease, which attacked persons so insidious¬ ly that they scarcely thought themselves to be ill, nor sought for medical advice, until, suddenly, symptoms of malignancy appear¬ ed. These were great lassitude, extreme loss of strength, stupor, or noisy delirium, feeble pulse, violent purging, following the ad¬ ministration of gentle medicines, and profuse hemorrhage, unat¬ tended by any relief to the symptoms. Between the fourth and seventh day there appeared “ in brachiis, dorso et pectore, ma¬ culae rubentes ssepe et puniceas puncturis pulicum similes.'1 It is manifest that these spots were not such as are called petechiae by authors at the present day, for Fracastorius enumerates the fading of the ^>ots, their scanty eruption, or their assuming a dark colour among the unfavourable symptoms. But one cir¬ cumstance which places it beyond doubt that these spots were not ordinary petechiae, but a measly efflorescence, such as is now often met with in the course of fever, is that measles and pete¬ chial fever were so frequently confounded together that medical writers found it necessary to point out the distinctions between * See the chronological table at the end of Der Englische Schweiss, von Dr J. F. Hecker. Berlin, 1834. f Guicciardini, Istoria d’ltalia, Vol. x. Lib. xix. Hecker, Lib. cit. pp. 71-81. £ Opera omnia, Francofurti, 1G00. Tractat. de tumoribus, Caput xxvii. § H. Fracastorii Veronensis Operum Pars Prior. Lugd. 1591. De contagioni- bus, Lib. ii. Cap. vi. De febre quam lenticulas vel puncticula vel peticulas vocant.