Temperature in acute disease : being a thesis read for the degree of doctor in medicine, before the University of Dublin, June 26, 1866 / by Thomas Armetriding Compton.

  • Compton, Thomas Armetriding.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Temperature in acute disease : being a thesis read for the degree of doctor in medicine, before the University of Dublin, June 26, 1866 / by Thomas Armetriding Compton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    10/44 (page 8)
    was still going on. The peritonitis had been caused by an over- loaded intestine, previously weakened, the colon being completely stuffed with scybala. There was no perforation. 5th. From the last proposition it follows, that the same altitude of the thermometer attained at one period of any disease is not of the same importance as the same height reached at another time in the same disease. Thus, in typhoid fever, a temperature which has been rising for two or three days, reaches perhaps 104 Fah. between the seventh and fourteenth days, without causing any anxiety; whereas should the same phenomenon occur about the twenty-eighth day, a fatal termination might probably be expected. And again, the actual altitude attained on a certain day in one disease is not of the same importance to our prognosis as the same height reached on the same day in another disease. Thus, a tem- perature of 104° Fah. in erysipelas is very common during the first week, and need not give rise to any alarm; but should such occur at the same date in acute rheumatism I should consider it of much more importance. 6th. That although, in all diseases, a high range of temperature generally indicates a severe case, with a slow convalescence, and a low range usually occurs in a mild case, and is followed by a rapid convalescence; yet there is no actual temperature in any disease which necessarily foretells a fatal termination. Thus I have regis- tered 105o-6 Fah. in a severe case of typhus ending favourably, 106o-3 Fah. in erysipelas, 105o-3 in typhoid; and each of these temperatures was the highest I ever took in the respective diseases. I certainly once registered a temperature of 107o-2 Fah., in a fatal case of pneumonia; but the great majority of fatal cases generally, although always exhibiting abnormal temperatures prior to collapse, have by no means had any extraordinarily high ranges. I believe that an abnormal course of temperature is more often the precursor of a fatal termination than any universally high range. 7th. That in the majority of cases a rise of temperature is contemporaiy with a rise of pulse, but that on the other hand there appears generally to be but little connexion between tempera- ture and frequency of respirations. The alteration in the pulse with a change of temperature is often not a proportional one, and may not take place at all unless the variation of temperature be as much as 2° Fah.