Copy 1, Volume 2

The works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D / Translated from the Latin edition of Dr. Greenhill, with a life of the author, by R.G. Latham.

  • Sydenham, Thomas, 1624-1689.
Date:
1848-1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D / Translated from the Latin edition of Dr. Greenhill, with a life of the author, by R.G. Latham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    you such observations upon those diseases which are the objects of your inquiries, as have occurred to me; and I shall begin with the intermittent fevers which are now epidemic. For this reason, it will not be foreign to my purpose to run over them in a cursory way, and in their order of suc- cession in which they followed the year with which I closed my ‘History of Acute Diseases,’ these being the diseases of fifteen years. I shall also, by the way, touch upon a few points of treatment already noted. By this means, the time and progress of the present constitution of fevers, and the rate at which it has crept upon us, will be made all the clearer. 9. The year 1676 brought forth the same diseases with that constitution which was last named in the ‘ Medical Ob- servations, namely, the constitution of the years 1673 (in the autumn of which it began), 1674, and 1675. As this consti- tution, however, was going out, the diseases that belonged to it were less frequent, mild of their sort, and not so epidemic in their character, the peculiar disposition of the year notwith- standing. This, in respect to the manifold qualities of the air, was very different from the years that went before it, inasmuch as both the heat of its summer and the cold of its winter far surpassed the heat and cold of any twelvemonth within the memory of man. Nevertheless, vast as was the difference of the seasons, the diseases of the seasons were alike ; a clear proof, that the condition of the atmosphere which favours epidemic diseases is less a manifest than an occult condition. At the same time it must be owned, that, in respect to certain of their symptoms, these self-same diseases depended upon a diathesis manifest rather than occult. This is proved both by the measles and the cholera morbus. Each ofthese diseases set in during the year in question, and each of them shall be briefly noticed by me. 6. The measles began at the beginning of the year. They were not very epidemic ; yet they had this peculiarity, that they ran on longer than usual. Usually they set in in January, and go on increasing till Lady-day. They then gradually diminish, and expire about Midsummer. Now, in the present year, they lasted till the autumnal equinox, and, unless I am mistaken, they took strength and obstinacy from the heats of summer. Notwithstanding this, the treatment was the treatment of measles in general.