Volume 1

The science and practice of medicine / By William Aitken ... From the 4th London ed., with additions, by Meredith Clymer.

  • William Aitken
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The science and practice of medicine / By William Aitken ... From the 4th London ed., with additions, by Meredith Clymer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    perature thus incidentally noticed. There were ulcers of the larynx found after death,bu1 there had been no affection of the voice; there were vomica and tubercles in the lungs, but there had been no cough; there were ulcerations of the intestines, but there had been no diar- rhoea ; there was disease of the testes, vesiculce seminales, and prostate, of a severe kind, but these lesions had been equally latent during lit'r. except hardening and enlargement of the testicle without paiQj—;,]] which conditions were only casually observed. In this very instructive case a temperature of six degrees Fahr. above the normal standard was the earliest indication of disease I Researches, Physiological and Anatomical, vol. i, p. 206). But it is mainly to Wunderlich, the Professor of Medicine in Leipsic, that we are indebted for an elaborate exposition and per- severing advocacy of the usefulness of daily records of the tem- perature of fever patients, and the constant employment of the thermometer as a means of diagnosis at the bedside. On this sub- ject he has written much, from an extensive experience, embracing at least half a million exact thermometric observations, following the continuous progress of individual diseases, the results of which he has compared in more than 5000 patients. He constantly em- ploys the thermometer in his private practice, and bears unqualified testimony to its sterling value in the early detection of disease, and as often furnishing an important guide to treatment. When the physician once becomes accustomed to the investigation of disease by the thermometer, he regards its daily employment as indispens- able, for it imparts a certainty to his observations, attainable by no natural penetration, and which no other method of investigation can convey (Medical Times and Gazette, June 19, 1858, and Septem- ber 28, 1861). More detailed results are published by the assistants or pupils of Wunderlich, in the Archives fiir Physiologisehe Heilkwide, 1860, p. 385, and 1861, p. 433; and the principal conclusions have been summed up by Wunderlich himself, in his Handbuch der Pathologic. From these sources the information given in this and former editions of this text-book w^as originally compiled. Wunderlich gives some striking instances of disease being indi- cated by thermometric observation before it could be detected by any other means: In agiu , several hours previous to the paroxysm, the temperature of the trunk of the patient's body begins to rise; and when the disease seems to have disappeared, an increase of temperature may be detected periodically, unaccompanied by any other symptom. So long as this periodic rise of temperature continues, the patient is only apparently, but not really cured. In typhoid fever, during the exacerbations especially, the rise of
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