Report of the City of Glasgow Fever Hospital, from 1st May, 1869 to 30th April, 1870.
- Russell, James Burn, 1837-1904.
- Date:
- 1870
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the City of Glasgow Fever Hospital, from 1st May, 1869 to 30th April, 1870. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
174/540 page 18
![and becomes ill of Typhus, you must go back for about a week or ten days for the date of infection. The poison has been lying dormant in the system during that period. Cases but rarely occur in which, just as if we had given a dose of poison and marked the hour and then watched for the appearance of the symptoms of poisoning, we can date such an event as sleeping one night with a fever convalescent and then note the first fever-symptoms, and so prove a latent period. I am certain, however, from various stray observa- tions, that nine days is about the average latent period of Typhus. Dr. Murchison comes to the same conclusion. Again, Typhus patients are with great regularity in the eighth day of their disease when admitted to Hospital. All save a fraction of the cases have gone as far as from the sixth to the eighth day. It is quite certain, therefore, that for the date of infection we must go back from the date of appear- ance of any case of fever in the books of the Hospital, or of the Sanitary Office, at least a fortnight; and if we go back from the date of “invasion,” or active outbreak of the disease, we will find the date of infection at least a week previous. On these grounds, no case of fever, arising even where con- valescents have returned home within these periods of a fortnight from the date of admission or a week from the date of invasion, can be ascribed to those convalescents. Of course there is also a reasonable limit in the other direction. Individual susceptibility varies, but not to a very marked extent. The staff of a Fever Hospital unfortunately provides abundant material for the accurate determination of these questions. We have healthy persons brought, in exactly similar circumstances, under the influence of a poison; or, if the circumstauces differ, the difference is known, and the result of the variation can be noted. In my first Annual Report (p. 38) I said—“ It is remarkable to find the close agreement in the length of time different systems, under similar circumstances, can resist the disease. * * * They [the nurses] usually are attacked in between twenty and thirty days; but if they tide over that period they become](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24917205_0174.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
