438 
TYPHUS FEVER — INFLUENZA, & C. 
covered with a slimy secretion — the conjunctival membrane may 
be slightly deepened in colour — the legs of unequal warmth — and 
the skin dry and arid. And the breathing; — why now and then it 
is slightly hurried, but not generally; and, when it is, its character 
is such that causes no apprehension as to the vital organs being im- 
plicated : in twenty-four or thirty-six hours a discharge, probably, 
from one or both nostrils, and, if so, so much the better. What 
causes of alarm have we here ] Ay, but these are favourable 
cases, certainly; and this is the feeling I am writing with, namely, 
that the vast majority are favourable cases. But we shall meet 
with some worse; and in these we find the respiration more hurried, 
the pulse considerably quickened, weak, fluttering — deglutition 
nearly or altogether impeded — the throat considerably swollen, and 
all the secretions deranged. Or we may find it taking another form, 
the cellular tissue being the seat of its development: then the head 
is swollen — the nostrils and lips quite puffy — the eyelids nearly 
closed — the legs oedematosed, swollen, tender, pitting however 
freely on pressure, and the animal scarcely able to move in his box, 
or see his way round it. Besides all this, we may have the lungs 
implicated, the spine affected, the bowels giving way, diarrhoea, or 
dysentery. Surely we have enough now to alarm us. True ; and 
still I once more repeat that influenza, properly treated, is not more 
fatal than strangles. 
“ Properly treated;” and this leads to the great diagnostic 
symptom indicated by the first title of this paper. This is an 
attack not of synochaor acute fever, requiring extensive depletions 
and active treatment, but of typhus or putrid-tending fever, the 
symptom requiring mild treatment, and the patient to be carried 
carefully and steadily through it. Tt is an inflammation not of a 
serous membrane, speedily fatal in its results, if not cut short by 
energetic treatment; but an inflammation of a mucous membrane 
in which any treatment that lessens the powers of the constitution 
interferes with and prevents Nature from having recourse to her 
own remedy, — namely, an increased secretion from the surface 
affected. A pure case of influenza never requires the use of the 
lancet ; — have recourse to it, and you convert a case of simple 
typhus at once into typhus gravior : its treatment should be as 
mild and simple as the disease itself. A mild laxative, scarcely in 
any case exceeding two drachms of aloes — a combination of diu- 
retic and tonic medicines — a counter-irritant to the throat, repeated 
daily, in preference to one active application — a cool box — moist 
food, but not antiphlogistic, will cure, with very little trouble but 
great credit to the judicious practitioner, forty-nine out of every 
fifty cases of influenza that he may have the good fortune to have 
placed under his care, with the satisfaction that his patients will he 
