OCR Text |
Show 109, [IyIa/nmation, how progressive. Nay, what is the miliary eruption but a proof of the general inflammatory diathesis, exerted in the skin? This eruption, I know, is most com- monly a fruit of the hot regimen. But would this prickly heat appear in healthy people, under the same regimen? I presume, much less frequently. And it is not true that this never appears under the coolest regimen. I have oftener than once seen it. There never was a more steady follower of that treatment than the late Dr. Clark. Hesaw it in intermittents, in con- tinued, and scarlet fever when the patients were kept cool (Onfevers p. 188 and elsewhere) Dr. Reil in his masterly work (fieber-Ze/zre l. 4938) gives this decisive evidence: " I have successfully bathed a patient's hands and face, 11.311 ‘IJJU 'lfllll _ l' whose burning heat was scarce to be overcome, with cold vinegar and water, for hours together without repulsion of the miliary eruption."-I certainly do not refer to sweating in proof of inflammation; but does not the strong perspiration, so often occurring in miliary fever, shew an excited state of the skin? How do these facts bear upon the doctrine of Ploucquet? Do they not greatly weaken that support which it seemed to receive from some dissections? Does not a more steady and com‘ prehensive survey of phaenomena suggest an opinion altogether different from first partial appearanceSF-Since inflammation is in its own Ilflammation, from progressit‘e. 10:3 own nature so communicable, since the disposition to it so prevails in fever (and probably the transmissibility increases in proportion): congestion, effusion, abscess in the head may often, in reality, prove nothing more or less concerning the cause of fever than results from that very miliary eruption which, at different times in the progress of the complaint, will arise upon the skin. In the following instance we see inflammation distinctly fixing 011 a predisposed organ-During a very malignant fever at Paris in 1708, a girl of the name of Gontier, 18, died-She had experienced much chagrin for three months, and the menses had been stopped by a sudden shock-From this time the symptoms of fever began forming-delirium on the third day-death the 5th,--right lung flabby-left inflamed-much effusion into the cavity of the thorax-heart, spleen, liver, mesentery, kidneys natural-intestines prodigi- ously distended and inflamed in spots-Uterus throughout most big/(lg izflamed-head not opened. At any moment inflammation may be kindled in any part, and it seems to be frequently kindled, shortly before death, in consequence of previous disease-by percep- tions or ideas with their attached feelings-by temperature-by medicines and outward appli- cations-by some causes which we can distinguish |