ACUTE INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



8UDOE ANGLICUS. STJETTE MTLIAIRE. SWEATING-SICKNESS. 

 FRIESEL FIEBER. 



A LARGE number of authorities, especially the Germans, deny the 

 existence of sudor anglicus as a peculiar disease. Thus Hebra ignores 

 the well-known fact that the prevalence of this malady is restricted 

 within extremely narrow geographical limits, and that, between the 

 various epidemics of it which have arisen long intervals have elapsed ; 

 so, having never met with a case of it himself, he concludes that there 

 is no such disorder. His remarks that there is no febrile affection in 

 which fever-vesicles may not appear, and that the invasion and course 

 of malaria are never accompanied by symptoms which accord with those 

 of sudor anglicus, prove nothing, save that the exanthema is not patho- 

 gnomonic of this disease, and by no means disprove the fact attested 

 to by many trustworthy authorities, that, besides typhus, acute ar- 

 ticular rheumatism, puerperal fever, and many other febrile com- 

 plaints, there also exists a peculiar sickness characterized by sweating 

 and a miliary eruption more profuse than is often observed in any 

 other disease. 



That suette miliaire, or the sweating-sickness^ should be named 

 after one of its prominent symptoms, is quite consistent with the ordi- 

 nary practice in the case of a disorder not referable to some simple 

 pathological state of a special organ. 



ETIOLOGY. Sudor anglicus, beyond a doubt, is an infectious dis- 

 ease. Its exclusively epidemic appearance, its independence of the 

 action of the weather, and other assignable antihygienic influences, 

 as well as the results of the few autopsies which have been made, 

 sufficiently warrant our classing it with typhus, the acute exanthe- 

 mata, and other disorders which we believe to proceed from infection 

 of the organism by a specific and probably organic poison, and which 

 diseases are certainly more numerous and varied than they are said to 

 be in the schools. Whether the specific poison of the sweating sick- 

 ness be reproduced in the person of the patient, and thence be trans- 

 mitted to others ; or, in other words, whether it be a contagious dis- 

 ease, is doubtful. All inoculations with the contents of the miliary 

 vesicles, hitherto made, seem to have afforded negative results. This 

 fact, as well as its narrow territorial confines, make it seem more prob- 

 able that sudor anglicus is not contagious, but that it proceeds from a 



