150 THE CONTAGIOUS TYPHUS 



slow asphyxia, but only at the third or fourth 

 period. 



Finally, when the typhus localizes more 

 particularly its morbid phenomena on the di- 

 gestive channels, we discern local alterations 

 on the floor of the tongue and the buccal 

 mucous membrane, spots of livid red, leaving 

 behind them ulcerations of greater or less ex- 

 tent and depth on different parts of the intes- 

 tinal canal. In this form, which follows more 

 regularly all the periods, constipation is obsti- 

 nate at the outset, evacuation of the bowels 

 takes place with difficulty, the faeces are hard 

 and the urine scanty, the belly is inflated and 

 sensitive. 



Sometimes at this period of initiation, one 

 of these three symptomatic forms the nervous, 

 the pulmonary, and the digestive may pre- 

 dominate exclusively, so far as to mask the 

 disease as a whole, and to constitute it a 

 special malady. But in that case, it is 

 only the exaggeration of the functional de- 

 rangements which in their total constitute the 

 typhus : for when the distemper pursues its 

 course, these three principal centres of life 



