Report of a committee of the associate members of the Sanitary Commission, on the subject of the nature and treatment of yellow fever.

United States Social Security Administration

Date:: 1862

Credit: Report of a committee of the associate members of the Sanitary Commission, on the subject of the nature and treatment of yellow fever. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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$he urged him to finish the last rapidly, that he might have time to sign it. Soon after, nnable to speak, he thanked his friend, with a sigh, and in a quarter of an hour was dead. Doctor John Wilson speaks of cases like these, where I have ordered a man to do his duty, because I could not see mtich the matter with him. He continued to do duty, after a fashion, for nearly two days, when the eruption of black vomit gave irresistible and mortifying evidence that the man was no impostor. It has been remarked that there is, in general, more or less marked diminution of muscular strength. In cases of haemorr- hage, and during the second stage (of apyrexia), a patient may be almost perfectly helpless from this debility. Cramps are not usually met with. Spasmodic action of the diaphragm, giving rise to hiccough, is by no means rare. With black vomit and ischuria, it belongs to the category of very bad symptoms. Of the type of yellow fever, enough has been said to estab- lish its difi'erence from remittent, intermittent, or congestive fever, as these terms have been explained in the paper de- voted to those affections. In some epidemics, occurring in malarious regions, the disease has presented elements of period- icity ; but every one familiar with the pathology of miasmatic ailments knows how easily this peculiar feature may occur, as a simple epiphenomenou, having no essential connection with the main malady. Doctor Lewis, by analysing twenty carefully- observed cases of yellow fever, concluded that \h% first stage, that «f febrile excitement, lasted twenty-two hours ; the second stage, that of remission or of calm, of deceiving tranquillity (Mosely), one hundred and twenty hours; that of collapse, fourteen hours. Of course, in different epidemics, these num- bers will be found to vary, materially. Few diseases progress so rapidly and are of such short dura- tion. Sometimes fatal cases occur within forty-eight hours, the great majority not being protracted beyond a week.$