A Treatise on the Eclectic Southern Practice of Medicine Page: 131 of 724

                                
CONGESTIVE FEVER.

and followed by a protracted cold stage, from which the
system reacts very feebly. The anxiously looked for
hot stage is rarely or never fully developed, even in
what might be called mild cases. But instead of it, the
temperature of the whole surface is greatly diminished
and irregular-the extremities being much colder than
the trunk. The pulse-becomes exceedingly weak and
quick, the respiration is short, hurried, and difficult
with generally a confirmed hippocratic countenance;
the patient complains of a painful sense of heat, and
weight in the epigastrium, (regio of the stomach) accom-
panied with insatiable thirst; there is uncontrollable rest-
lessness; the patient tosses himself from side to side, and
often rises up as if to relieve the oppression of the lungs;
there is either pain, or giddiness, or sense of weight in
the h e; and the countenance looks contracted, pale,
and anxious, and often livid; the tongue is generally
moist, and the bowels in a large majority of cases are
loose, and the dejections serous. These are the general
symptoms at an early period of the disease ; they are sub-
ject, however, to considerable modification according as
tie brain and spinal marrow, the lungs, or the abdominal
viscera are the chief seats of the congestion; the most
prominent symptoms in all cases being particularly re-
ferable to the chiefly engorged organs.
If the condition above detailed is not soon removed
by the recuperative efforts which nature makes to throw
off the oppressive load under which she is laboring,
aided by proper remedial agents, there is a rapid ten-
dency to total collapse. This usually occurs either on
the third or the fifth day, when, as has been remarked,
the paroxysms are unusually severe. This condition is
marked by all the symptoms which indicate profound

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