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FEVER , IN ITS SOCIAL ASPECTS. 5
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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» ^ Between The Subject Medical Of Fever...
tion . It commonly lasts only a few days , and Is , in this country , rarely fatal .
Pythogenic or Typhoid Fever has been distinguished by the names Kemittent FeverSlow FeverLow Nervous FeverGastric
ing or Bilious a close Fever resemblance , and m , any to t oth yphus ers . , is , The , in many term respects typhoid , , , inappro suggest-
priate . " Pythogenic" was suggested by Dr . Murchison some years ago . It is derived from irvQb ) putresco ( from the Sanskrit
puj , to become rotten , ) and _yzvvaw , , and is , Intended to point out what Dr . Murchison believes to be the cause of the fever . The
final recognition of this fever , as distinct and separate from typhus , Is of comparatively recent date , and has been mainly due to the
researches of Gerhard , Stewart , and Jenner . It Is much more common on the Continent and in the _tidies than typhus . It is
mainly a disease of young persons , though no age is secure against It . Unlike typhusit is much more prevalent in the autumn than
, In any other season , and is always unusually prevalent after a warm dry summer . The remarkable diminution in the number of
cases of pythogenie fever after the cold and wet summer of 1860 was a subject of general remark . Its prevalence appears to be entirely
independent of overcrowding and deficient ventilation . It prevails without distinction not only in the most crowdedbut also in the
, least . populous districts of large towns , and is of common occurrence in country places and sea-portsand even in isolated houses .
, Destitution does not appear to act as a predisposing" cause . In fact , epidemics of this fever spread as rapidly among the rich as
among the poor , and seem in some cases to have begun in the former class . It is much less distinctly contagious than typhus
or relapsing fever . Nurses and medical attendants in hospitals very rarely take it ; other patients scarcely ever . During the last
fourteen and . a half years , 2 , 506 cases have been admitted into the London Fever Hospital , and eight cases only are reported as having
originated in the hospital . Dr . Murchison believes there , is no proof that pythogenie fever can be communicated by contact with
the sick , by fomites , or by the dead body . In the cases of socalled contagionthe poison is transmitted through the medium
of the intestinal , excretions of the sick , which are , in this disease , unusually prone to decomposition . It is often generated
spontaneously by fermentation of similar matter in drains , where the air is confinedand the fermenting mass in a state of stagnation .
Pro-, bably its spontaneous generation in this way is much more frequent than its transmission from the sick to the healthy . Dr . Murchison
meets the objection that persons are often exposed to the emanations from decomposing animal matter without contracting enteric fever ,
with the remark , that ' because f becal fermentation generates the p oison of enteric feverit does not follow that this poison is contained in the
, exhalations of every form of animal matter undergoing deeomposi
tion , such as from dead bodies in a dissecting-room , from old bones
Fever , In Its Social Aspects. 5
FEVER , IN ITS SOCIAL ASPECTS . 5
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 2, 1863, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_02031863/page/5/
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