Diphtheria : its symptoms and treatment / by William Jenner.

  • Jenner, William, Sir, 1815-1898.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diphtheria : its symptoms and treatment / by William Jenner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rather feeble, the first and second sounds free from murmur, and of normal duration ; the period of rest—the long silence—was longer than it should be, that is to say, the heart's beats were infrequent, not slow. The infrequency and the feebleness of the heart's beats and the vomiting alone told that the boy's life was in danger. The next morning Mr. Adams informed me the pulse, notwith- standing the freest use of stimulants, had fallen to thirty-two, in the afternoon it was twenty-four only, and soon after he died apparently from cessation of the heart's action. The return of fluids through the nose, the fall in the frequency of the pulse, and the vomiting, sometimes occur before the local and general symptoms have subsided. Thus, in one of the two fatal cases I saw with Mr. Jay, in July, 1858 : some days before the little girl's death, which occurred a fortnight after the first symptoms, Mr. Jay noted that there was stertorous breathing, dimi- nution in temperature, relaxation of the skin with free perspiration, return of fluids through the nose, with so great a fall in the frequency of the pulse, that for some time before death, there were not more than sixteen beats of the heart in