Some practical aspects of the plague at Sydney / by Frank Tidswell.

  • Tidswell, Frank.
Date:
[1900?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some practical aspects of the plague at Sydney / by Frank Tidswell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    we reluctantly had to let the rest as soon as we were satisfied that infiammation in the buboes had really ceased. Of course, they were also completely free from constitutional symptoms. There is no theoretical reason really opposed to this procedure, and nothing against it appeared in our ]jractice. It seemed to be a perfectly safe thing to do. But the question of patients with open sores was another matter. They were perfectly well except for the local lesion, which was sometimes very small. But although our own observations were in accord with the statement that plague bacilli cannot be detected in the dis- charges after a certain time, we did not feel justified in releasing such patients whilst any sign of discharge remained. Consequently, they accumulated in the hospital, blocked up beds, filled the convalescent wards, and so impeded the proper reception of acute cases. They thus constituted a real practical difficulty for which we discovex’ed no solution. Indications of plague other than buboes.—Failing the detection of a bubo, the opinion one can form amounts to a more or less well-grounded suspicion, based as far as I was concerned on general indications rather than precise symptoms. I do not wish to imply any neglect to ascertain, and estimate the sig- nificance of, the state of the temperature, pulse, tongue, etc., but that in plague, as in most other diseases, the search for characteristic physical signs was practically consequent on the impression afforded by the general aspect of the case. I have therefore elected to endeavour to portray the general conditions in which we found our various patients, adopting this course the more readily since the detailed symptoms exhibited by them were in accord with the many excellent descriptions now avail- able, and with which you are no doubt familiar. I call attention in the first place to cases in which the incidence was so swift, and the virulence so great, that the only suspicious element was the sudden death of the patient, and the only means of verification the post-mortem examination of the body. Thus there was one case in which a man, who had got up, taken his breakfast and gone out in accordance with his usual custom, was drinking at a bar when he complained of feeling very giddy and sick. He remained depressed and miserable for some time, and then went to the back premises of the hotel. A little while afterwards he was found dead in an outhouse. It was only at the autopsy that he was ascertained to have been stricken down by plague. There was another case in which a young girl fell sick one afternoon with head- ache, vomiting, etc., her attack being such as commonly follows, and was actually ascribed to, some dietary indis- cretion. She died next day before noon, and on examination
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