An inaugural dissertation on the influenza / [Robert Johnston].

  • Johnston, Robert
Date:
1793
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural dissertation on the influenza / [Robert Johnston]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fhivering, by the febrile fymptoms appearing earlier, and being more confiderable in degree. It moreover gives a more fudden and violent fhock to the ftrength, and in many inftances produces a perpetual watching, follow- ed by a diforderly and uneafy ftate of the mind, material- ly different from the phrenetic delirium of the febris ar- dens incident to patients labouring under catarrhs from _ cold, or fuch like inflammatory difeafes. It is likewife diftinguifhed by its affecting more perfons at once, fpreading over a greater extent of country in a given time, and in being [more] contagious. . The influ- enza is fometimes accompanied with miliary and eryfipela- tous eruptions, but the catarrh from cold is not. The latter is flow in its advances, feldom giving alarm until, perhaps, long after the exiftence of danger, whilft the former, for the moft part lefs dangerous, excites immedi- ate terror, as well:by the number of functions which it affects at the fame inftant, asby the rapidity of its pro- grefs ; for in the influenza the tranfitions from apparently high health to ficknefs are often, as it were, inftantane- ous. Blood-letting, and other fuddenly debilitating remedies were feldom fo neceflary in this diforder as in the common catarrh, and fewer confumptions were the confequence of it, than might have been expected from a common cold among an equal number of perfons. There is no difeafe to which the human body is liable, fo extenfive in range, fo fudden in attack, fo furious at the beginning, fo rapid in its courfe, and at the fame time attended with fo little danger.
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