Lectures on clinical medicine delivered in the Royal and Western infirmaries of Glasgow / by McCall Anderson.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on clinical medicine delivered in the Royal and Western infirmaries of Glasgow / by McCall Anderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    I.] INTRODUCTORY. 7 will come to be chiefly valued for one of two reasons— either to ascertain the presence or absence of pyrexia in doubtful cases, or, when fever is undoubtedly present, to gauge its intensity. The use of an ordinary ther- mometer too in the sick room of a patient, with the view of regulating the temperature of the atmosphere which surrounds him, more accurately than can be done by the unaided senses, is of the utmost value, especially in inflammatory affections of the respiratory tract, and should be universally adopted, as inattention to this rule is not only calculated to aggi'avate symptoms and retard recovery, but also to favour the occurrence of relapses, or the su])ervention of some other di.sorder. The introduction of the clinical thermometer as an infallible guide to the intensity of the febrile state has led on the part of a few to the systematic adoption of a method of reducing the temperature in cases of hyper- pyrexia, and one which is far more effectual than the administration of drugs; for it must be borne in mind that high fever is, in itself, a source of great danger, apart altogether from that of the disease which has called it into being. This consists in the sucking of ice, the application of iced cloths to the surface of the body, the cold douche, and the cold bath. Of these the most powerful, and the most peimanent in its effects, is the last, and which may be usefully employed when the temperature in the axilla registers 105' Fahr. or upwards. The average length of time for the patient to be in the bath is a quarter of an hour, but we must be guided chiefly by its effects, and e.specially by the rapidity with which the temperature, as ascertained by the thermometer retained in the axilla, approaches the normal temperature of the body, and it must be repeated whenever the results of the previous bath have passed rm