Observations on the diseases of the army / by Sir John Pringle, bart.

  • Pringle, John, Sir, 1707-1782.
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the diseases of the army / by Sir John Pringle, bart. 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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    But the troops having continued several days at Litchfield, a greater number of sick was left in that place than in any other. On this account the work- house was fitted up for an hospital, where too many being admitted, the air was corrupted, and the com- mon inflammatory fever changed into one of the jail kind, of which several died. (28) But at all other places where the soldiers were taken ill, and where there was no common hospital, this hospital or jail- fever was unknown. The autumnal remitting fever, disguised with many symptoms of cold, could be traced in the troops that came over from Flanders, till the frosts in December put an end to it. But the prevailing disorders were hard coughs, stitches, pleuritic and rheumatic pains, with a few fluxes, the usual consequences of the men being exposed to colds and rains on duty, or to wet feet on the march. There were some intermittents besides, but all with such a mixture of coughs and infarctions of the lungs, as made bleeding the most necessary remedy. In general, bleeding was so requi- site, that in every town through which the troops past, and where the sick were to be left behind, the physician of the army believed the surgeons and apo- thecaries of the place more than half instructed about the cure of the patients committed to them, when he had inculcated the necessity of large and repeated (28) Uncommon mortality took place among the soldiers of the American army in the spring of 1777, from the same cause, in the house of employment in Philadelphia, which was then made use of as a military hospital. All the surgeons who attended it sickened, and three of them died from the contagion of the fever, generated wholly by too many patients being crowded to- gether in the same wards.