Wheeler's handbook of medicine / by William R. Jack.

  • Wheeler, Alexander, -1903.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wheeler's handbook of medicine / by William R. Jack. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    particular part of the body, but the products of their vitality may enter the circulation, and cause, besides fever, the pheno¬ mena of toxaemia, on which manv of the nervous and cardiac symptoms largely depend (delirium, cardiac irregularity or tachycardia, and so on). Fever, it may be more than plausibly said, is a reaction of the previously healthy body against the organisms of disease and their products, or, as Adami puts it, it is “ the process of adaptation to such toxic agencies as can be neutralised by the development of antibodies.” In many instances the reaction is excessive, and destroys by its over- exuberance the life it was meant to guard. But that it is a pro¬ tective reaction is shown in the diseases of the old. In them, where the body has no longer its former resistant power, there is little or no fever, even in such affections as pneumonia. A young man, previously healthy, may regain perfect health after a pneumonic attack, although in its duration his temperature may have risen to 105° F. or more. An old man suffering from pneumonia may have a temperature but little elevated, and yet the disease almost inevitably tends towards death. In the one case the febrile reaction expresses the resistance of the body ; in the other its absence expresses a failing power to combat either micro-organisms or their toxins. It is evident from these remarks that fevers must be fought upon two lines :— (1) Prophylaxis. Microbic life does not flourish except upon suitable soils, which must be rendered unsuitable by measures of hygiene and sanitation. In the actual presence of an epidemic, those exposed to infection can sometimes be immunised by serum or vaccine treat¬ ment [see p. 17). (2) Treatment, (a) The body of a patient attacked by one of the fevers may be looked upon as a suitable soil for the specific organism. We must endeavour to make the soil unsuitable by such means as internal anti¬ septics, tonics, and stimulants ; in other words, to fight the bacteria by making the resistance greater, through increasing the vitality of the tissues. (b) In certain instances (diphtheria, etc.), by the use of antitoxins, v e may administer a direct antidote to the toxins formed by the specific micro-organism. In other instances (pneumonia), by the use of vaccines, we may attempt to promote the bactericidal power of the blood.
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