Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the theory and practice of physic (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![bilious or gastric fever were exchanged for those of dysentery, pro- bably an extension took place of the irritation from the mucous mem- brane of the stomach and small intestines to that of the large .intes- tines ; a supposition rendered probable by some of the dissections made both by Dr. Cheyne himself and by Mr. Twining, in which the stomach, and still more the small intestines, were found to be inflamed. A contagious origin has been attributed to dysentery by writers and practitioners of great repute; but, as it seems to me, without adequate foundation. The same mistake pervades the reasoning in this as in so many other diseases, viz., in confounding community of cause, by which a number of persons are affected in a certain order of succession, modified by constitution and degree of exposure, with transmission of a morbid poison from one of these persons to another. Bv the same logic, intermittent fever, and even catarrh, might be shown to be contagious ; as it could be proved that one member of a family was seized with the disease while nursing another suffering under the same malady. The most plausible argument in favour of the contagiousness of dysentery is made when this dis- ease is associated with fevers of a typhoid character, and some- times with typhus itself; but in such cases, dysentery, like bronchitis, is a superadded disease, a complication of the original malady, and, in this view, does not come within the scope of investigation into the etiology of either real sporadic or epidemic dysentery. Doctor Cheyne, who expresses his belief in the contagion of dysentery under particular circumstances, or, at least, that the con- tagion of fever may at one time produce fever, at another dysentery, relates an experiment which was meant to prove the adverse side of the question. It was a dirty and not a conclusive one. In the years 1797, 1798, and 1799, the dysentery prevailed in the Caithness legion of fencibles to some extent. The surgeon, anxious to deter- mine the question as to its infectious [contagious?] nature, caused the same glyster-pipe to be used, without cleansing, for those labour- ing under dysentery, and those who were free from that disease; the latter, notwithstanding, were not infected, from which he concluded that the dysentery of Cork is not infectious. Duration, Termination, and Prognosis. — It is difficult to assign a duration to dysentery. It may disappear in twenty-four hours, or it may last fifteen to twenty days. Commonly the period is from four to eight days. If the disease does not end in health, it will in some other disease, or in death. Dysentery is productive of several forms of dropsy, — ascites and anasarca in particular; and it is worthy of remark, that a swelling occurred in several of the patients, both male and female, resembling the phlegmasia dolens in all respects, but in its connection with parturition. (Cheyne, op. cit.) Sometimes there was a translation of disease to the lungs, with great dyspnoea, which was in one or two instances removed by venesection and a blister to the sternum. The continued irritation and straining at stool may lead to very unpleasant consequences, — frequently to dysuria and procidentia ani. The deaths, says Dr. Cheyne, which took place in the first stage of dysentery, were owing to fever, or to some other fatal disease which concurred. When owing to fever, a peculiar state of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21156955_0230.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
