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

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898
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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    those two diseases. Cardanus, that universal genius whose repu¬ tation in other branches of science has cast his merits as a physi¬ cian somewhat into the shade, mentions as one of a hundred dead¬ ly errors into which they who practised medicine in his day fell : “ Quod pulicarem morbum, morbillum credunt.”* He says, that this mistake has led to many serious faults in treatment, and ac¬ cordingly he points out the differences between the two diseases. He notices that petechial fevep&does not, like measles, affect every body once during their life, but that it may occur several times in the same individual; that it is a very fatal disease, though only occasionally prevalent; and that it is associated with bubo or other pestilential symptoms. Nicolaus Massaf devoted a chapter to the same subject, and Montuus+ remarks, u Sed falso morbilli putantur puncta qusedam pulicum morsibus non dissimilia, quse per febres pestilentes in cutis superficie aliquando visuntur ” The introduction of petechial fever into France is attributed by Fracastorius § to the circumstance of A. Naugerio, a friend of his, journeying on an embassy to Francis I., as far as Blois, where he died of petechial fever, which was thus introduced in¬ to a country where it was previously unknown. Fracastorius does not state that Naugerio was affected when he left his own country. When petechial fever first broke out in Italy, it was imagined that Italians only became its victims, and that the disease pursued them into foreign lands, while foreigners in Italy escaped unhurt. So, on the first appearance of the sweating-sickness, it was thought, the general air. From pole to pole, from Atlas to the east, Was then at enmity with English blood. For, but the race of England, all were safe In foreign climes ; nor did this fury taste The foreign blood which England then contained.” This illusion was, however, soon removed in the case of both diseases, by their extension to other countries, probably owing to those great changes which were at that time taking place everywhere in the character of epidemics, rather than to the mere propagation of the diseases by contagion. But, however this may have been, traces of petechial fever are to be found soon after this time in the French writers. FerneliusH alludes to it, and Ambrose Pare and Palmarius speak more fully on the subject. In this treatise * Hieronymi Cardani Opera omnia. Lugdum, 1663, Tome vii. De methodo medendi, Sectio prima. Cap. xxxvi. p. 216. # . ... + ]_,iber de Febre Pestilentiali. Venetiis, 1556. Cap. iv. De pestichns, mor- billis, variolis, ac aliis cutaneis papulis et maculis et earum differentia, p. 67-70. + Halosis Febrium. Lugd. 1558. Lib. vii. Cap. ii. S Op. cit. p. 156. .. || Universa Medicina, cum notis, &c. J. et 0. Heurnn—Tr. ad Rhenum, 16o6. De Febribus, Cap. xviii.