Lectures and essays on fevers and diphtheria, 1849 to 1879 / by Sir William Jenner.
- Date:
- 1893
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures and essays on fevers and diphtheria, 1849 to 1879 / by Sir William Jenner. 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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![from the upper limbs; in three it was moderate in the legs and arms; and in five it was but little marked in either of the extremities. Of seven other bodies examined, with re- spect to the point we are considering, more than thirty-six hours after death, it was well marked in one forty-eight hours after death ; it was moderately well marked in another forty- two hours, and had disappeared from a third forty-two hours, and nearly so from a fourth forty hours, after death;—while it was present in the lower extremities, examined in the re- maining three of the seven, respectively, thirty-eight, forty- five, and fifty-two hours after the termination of life. Thus, cadaveric rigidity was well marked in all the ex- tremities of six of the seven bodies of the patients who died from typhoid fever and were examined during the first twenty- four hours after death with reference to the point in question ; while it was well marked in all the limbs in six only out of fourteen dead from typhus fever examined during the same period; or if we take the whole of the cases, it was more or less absent in two of the sixteen bodies of the patients who died of typhoid fever, i.e. one-eighth of them, or in the pro- portion of 12-5 per cent.; while it had more or less disap- peared, during the same period, from twenty-six of the thirty- four cases of t3rphus fever, i.e. from more than three-fourths of them, or in the proportion of 79'4 per cent. I was not aware of this remarkable difference having existed, till I made this analysis, or many points of interest connected with it might have been made out, but then I have the satisfaction of knowing, although I have ascertained less on the point than I might have otherwise done, that in what I observed I could have been biassed by no pre-conceived opinion on the sub- ject. Anxious to ascertain the real cause of the difference, I have examined the two groups, i.e. those of typhoid and typhus fever, with reference to the state of the weather at the time the subjects lay in the dead-house, the age and previous state of health of the patients, the local complications, and the duration of the disease in the separate cases included under each group. The result of my investigations on these ])oints is, that none of these circumstances was the cause of the difference observed in the duration of the cadaveric I'igidity, so that it could only have been due to some peculiar](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2192272x_0069.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
