A case of rheumatic purpura : with notes / by J. Wickham Legg.
- John Wickham Legg
- Date:
- [1883]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A case of rheumatic purpura : with notes / by J. Wickham Legg. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![■clinical observation, than when I examined the subject more than ten years agod Setti n<^ aside the demonstration of an increase of the colour- less corpuscles in the blood in some cases of purpura, there seems but little to record of any increase of knowledge of the state of the blood in this disease. The instrument for nurahering the •corpuscles in a cubic millimeter is a distinct help to the clinical ])hysician ; but in purpura it has only told us what we might have looked for, viz., that the red corpuscles were diminished. The chemistry of the blood, like so many other parts of physio- logical chemistry, is in too imperfect a state to give us at this moment any aid. Let us turn now to the details of our case:— Charles D., aged i8, admitted into Luke’s Ward on Feb- Tuary 3, 1883. For the greater part of these careful clinical notes I am indebted to Mr. Oswald A. Browne, the house-physician, though in some places I have added a few observations of my own. He is a patent-capsule-maker, and much tin is n.sed in his trade. He says that he is a teetotaller, and lives at Holloway, where there is no illness in the same house or street. He was vaccinated when a baby, but not since. He has been well fed, and not lacked meat or vegetable food. There is no family history of bleedings or of purpura on the father’s or mother’s side. He had rheumatic fever twelve years ago, and again in May last, when he was in University College Hospital ; and for the following information as to his sojourn in this hospital I am ■indebted to my friend Dr. Thomas Barlow. He was in the hospital from May 23 to July 8, his illness having begun three weeks before admission. He had a presystolic and systolic murmur at apex and a systolic murmur at the base; no skin disorder was noted. His temperature varied from 99° to 100°; rarely more than this. There were etdargement of the knuckles and swelling of the elbows: the other joints were also stiff and somewhat swollen. He has had what he calls rheumatism every winter for the last eleven years, and he was then usually laid up for six or seven weeks. In none of them did he have any spots on the body, as in the present attack. He has never had hasmoptysis or hsematuria. He denies syphilis, but admits having had a running; he lived and worked among loose companions. The present illness began about a fortnight before February i. ^ See luy Treatise on Hsemophilia, London, 1872, p. 94.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22428057_0024.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
