590 The Philippine Journal of Science 1923 



came so intolerable that the medication had to be suspended 

 temporarily. 



Reaction. — In the ordinary course of events in leprosy which, 

 broadly speaking, is an afebrile disease, there occur occasional 

 periods of fever noticeable to the patients, usually with dis- 

 turbance of the leprotic lesions and often with the appearance 

 of new ones. Leprosy treatments are apt to induce such re- 

 actions. They occur more frequently in treated than in un- 

 treated cases, and are often atypical in their manifestations. 

 In the course of the treatment under discussion 75 per cent 

 of the patients had some such reaction. 



In most instances the reaction consisted of simple fever 

 without cutaneous manifestations; four had chills, two only 

 once and two repeatedly. The fever in these simple cases with- 

 out cutaneous manifestations usually lasted but two to five days, 

 though in a few instances it persisted for a week. It was 

 usually remittent, ranging from 37.5° to 38.7° C, and was 

 sometimes accompanied by other disturbances, as headache, 

 weakness, and body pains. 



In four cases exacerbations of the leprotic lesions occurred. 

 In these cases fever lasted sometimes as long as three weeks, 

 with daily remissions, the fever ranging from 37.9° to even as 

 high as 39.9° C. In these, more severe reactions the patient 

 seemed decidedly ill. 



Another reaction phenomenon occasionally seen, nerve pain, 

 occurred in three of these cases. One of the three patients with 

 repeated reactions in the cutaneous lesions, a case of apparently 

 pure cutaneous type, suffered intense sciatic pains, repeatedly 

 lasting for about four days. Another, a mixed case, with only 

 one skin reaction, also had sciatic pain. The third case with 

 nerve pain, located in both peroneal nerves, had repeated simple 

 febrile reactions without skin manifestation. 



When simple fever occurred treatment was usually suspended 

 temporarily, although in some cases it was pushed until other 

 side effects were observed. 



After each reaction with exacerbations of the leprotic lesions 

 the patients appeared to have become weakened, but this was 

 not so with those manifesting only simple fever. 



SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION 



The present work was undertaken to try out, on cases under 

 our care, the tartar emetic treatment of leprosy advocated by 

 Cawston and Wildish. These authors claim to have obtained 



