Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c16.14

c16.14

A day or two before the seizure, the patient finds his appetite fall off, feels an unaccountable lassitude, and failure in the natural moisture of the mouth, is low spirited without any apparent cause, and cannot sleep as usual; but having no acute complaint whatsoever, nor preternatural heat, that should indicate a fever, he attributes the whole to the heat of the season, is satisfied with fasting and confinement to his house, or goes abroad amongst his friends to ‘shake it off’, as the common phrase is; but on the third day, finding every one of these symptoms increase, he begins to think something is really the matter with him, and the physician is called in: thus the only period is lost wherein art might be of any use; for in the course of eighteen years practice I never knew an instance of recovery from this genuine fever, where the first three days had elapsed without assistance and the patient in this case died on the fifth or seventh day. In some, this fever is attended with a full equal, undisturbed pulse, but obviously greatly *oppressed*; in others with a low and *depressed* one, but equal and undisturbed also, and yet both required the same treatment. Newcomers in the profession, have been often fatally misled by the full pulse, which they thought indicated the loss of blood; they followed the suggestion, the pulse suddenly fell, and when that happens from this cause, the art of man can never raise it again, the patient dies on the fifth or seventh day; and the consequence was exactly the same, if nature, being overloaded, attempted to free herself of part of the burden by a natural haemorrhage, or by the intestines, on the second or third day, (which I have often seen) they proved equally fatal as the lancet. Until the close of the sixth day the skin and urine preserved a natural state; but if at this period of the fever the skin suddenly acquired an intense heat, and the urine grew crude and limpid, it was a sure presage of death on the seventh. The natural crisis of this fever, when attacked in the very beginning, and treated judiciously, was regularly on the eleventh day, and appeared in a multitude of small boils, chiefly upon the head or in small watery bladders thrown out upon the surface of the skin, but in the greatest abundance on the breast, neck, throat, and forehead; both of these critical appearances are constantly preceded, on the tenth day, by a copious sediment and separation in the urine. If by any inadvertent exposure to the cold air, these critical eruptions were struck in, the repelled matter instantly fell upon the brain, and convulsions, and death followed in a few hours, and small purple spots remained in the places of the eruptions. Such is the *genuine putrid nervous fever of Bengall*, which never gave way properly to any treatment but that of blisters applied universally, supported by the strongest alexipharmics; sometimes I have seen the crisis (by unskilful management) spun out to the twenty-first day, but it has been ever imperfect, and the patient is harassed with intermittents or diarrhoeas, and commonly dies in the beginning of the cold season; but if he is of a strong constitution, he lingers on, in a dying way, until the month of February, which usually gives some turn in his favour, but his health is hardly re-established before the salutary mango season, which fruit, eaten with milk, proves an effectual and never-failing restorative. But to resume our subject.