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Show 1 '38 III/drocep/zalus internus. Hydrocephalus inter-nus. phalus had been fatally mistaken, as dissection proved, for typhus; and the means neglected, which prove certainly successful in early hydrocephalus internus. To me, however, the gene- ral course of the two disorders in subjects of the same tender age has appeared distinguishable, chiefly by attending to the affection of the head. I lately saw a child, six years old, whose complaint was previously announced to me as typhus by two practitioners: Soon after he began to droop ; he had received a yiolent contusion at the root of the nose. This particular led me to conjecture at the moment that it would turn out hydrocephalus. However no- thing in the pulsation of the arteries about the head orin the character ofthe pain confirmed the reassersucht, 18093, [1. ix.) 1 J'9 He says, he saw the latter mistaken for a disguised intermittent and the bark given in vain. I have seen something similar; and Dr. VVichmann, in his admired ideas on diagnosis contrasts the malignant intermittent (in near 100 cases of which Dr. Cleg- horn, Dis. (fl/[norm p. 180, found great disorganization in the abdomen but no accumulation ofliquid in the ventricles ofthe brain, no inflammation there) with hydrocephalus internus. Till we acquire some kind of scale for measuring both susceptibility and symptoms, it will be impossible to establish the distinctions, necessary to prove the negative against certain hypotheses. I do not iriyselfpretend to know how to draw lines, which shall mark an absolute surmise; and wetting the body, when heated, with cold water, gave an immediate favourable turn to the complaint, which could not have taken place without stronger measures, I appre- comes on after typhus has continued a number of hend, if at all, on the 6th or 7th day of hydro- days, and that enteritis, on the other hand, will cephalus. Dr. I'Iopfengaertner, an experienced, continue for days without becoming typhoid acute, and not generally fanciful autl‘ior,.at- in the sense of Dr. Ploucquet? These then must temp-ts on the faith of observation and dissection, to distinguish between inflammation of the put mater and d ropsyof the ventricles (ueb d.Ge/1irnwassersuc/zf, be regarded as originally different diseases, though continually approximating and becoming identical perhaps towards their close- certainly undistinguishable on dissection, by any criterion yet proposed. Thus, I lately heard an excellent anatomist observe that he non dubitavi bane ob causam, quod cerebrum semper ita se habet, uti reperitur in hydrocephalo chronico-mollioris nelnpfi "Mums 8t alCC-‘Jloris substantiae. (Br-arm: Topog. med. Lipsmt; separation between inflammation of the intes- tinal canal and fever (typhus), yet is it not clear that intestinal inflammation sometimes had been opening a body and found reason to 379-8, p. 20). SUPPOSC ,1 won M09 |