A case of typhus or ship fever, with remarks / by Wm. Ingalls.

  • William Ingalls
Date:
1848
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A case of typhus or ship fever, with remarks / by Wm. Ingalls. 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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    it was adopted by physicians of other countries. Febris maligna hectica sive lues vevqi»5t]; convulsiva, Willis de morb. convulsiv. cap. 8. Hoc est exemplum, ni fallor, primum appellationis NevQwdyg, vel nervosa?, febribus quibusvis datee ; quam protinus Angli, non tumen nisi super admodum aliarum regionum medici, usurpati sunt. Of the nosologists, Cullen is the first that has made any allusion to the ner- vous system in the description of typhus. In the nosological sys- tems of Sauvages and Vogel, whose works did not appear until a century after Willis wrote, there is no symptom that appertains to this constituent of the body. Hence the brain, or the medulla spinalis, being the seat of typhus, is a theory of recent invention. That anatomical investigations do not support the doctrine that these organs, or indeed any part of the economy, constitute the seat of typhus, we have the authority of Morgagni, Fordyce, and J. B. S. Jackson of Boston. The latter gentleman, Professor of Pathology in Harvard University, in whose talents and accuracy in the investiga- tion of morbid structures this community places implicit confidence, says, the appearances on dissection are of a negative character. Dr. Fordyce, not finding any morbid alteration in the tissues, infers that fever is a disease that affects the whole system, but that it does not affect the various parts of the system uniformly and equally. Since Clutterbuck advanced the theory, that the inflammation of the brain and its membranes was the cause of typhus, it has become the fashion to ascribe all the operations going on in the economy to the agency of the nervous system ; and, indeed, to endow it with all the prerogatives of the principle of vitality. So far from being entitled to this pre-eminence, it is indebted to the principle of vitality for its existence. The encephalon is the organ of sensation, whereas the muscular system is that part of the human frame to which contrac- tility or irritability, according to the acceptation of these terms, ex- clusively belongs. Tonicity of the animal fibre is dependent on the force by which its molecules are brought into apposition by the law of affinity. Contractility is an inherent power, co-ordinate with or superadded to tonicity, by which the muscles, which are made up of a conge- ries of fibres, may contract so as to render them shorter and more compact. By the former the component parts are maintained in juxtaposition ; by the latter, under the influence of the will, the mus- cles are capable of performing their office with an energy in pro-
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