A manual of infectious diseases / by E.W. Goodall and J.W. Washbourn.

Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of infectious diseases / by E.W. Goodall and J.W. Washbourn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    which these two mechanisms are correlated. Muscular exercise, by increasing the metabolism, causes a large production of heat, and this would raise the temperature of the body were it not compensated by an increased loss of heat. Such a compensation occurs ; for the blood- vessels of the skin become dilated, and sweat is poured out from the glands. Consequently, even with violent exercise, no appreciable change in the body temperature ensues. Symptoms of Fever. In disease the normal temperature of the body is frequently altered. The most usual change is a rise of temperature, and when this exceeds 99° Fahr. the patient is said to be suffering from pyrexia or fever. It would perhaps be better to use the term pyrexia to connote simply an increased body temperature, and to apply the term fever to a group of symptoms of which the most obvious is pyrexia. Using the terms in the above sense, we will first discuss the clinical aspects of fever. If the temperature is observed throughout, several stages may be recognised; and information of diagnostic value can often be obtained by studying the way in which the temperature behaves during each stage. The first or initial stage is that in which the temperature rises to its maximum. The duration of this stage differs according to the nature of the disease. In pneumonia it only lasts a few hours, the temperature rapidly reaching the maximum, while in enteric fever its duration is several days. The second stage, the acme or fastigiwm as it is called, is that in which the temperature remains near its maximum