DR. WILLIAM DOUGLASS' DESCRIPTION OF SCARLET FEVER IN 1736—AN AMERICAN MEDICAL CLASSIC

[摘要] Dr. William Douglass (1691-1752) was born in Scotland and received his medical education in Paris and Leyden. He came to Boston in 1716, and for a long time was the only physician in Boston with a medical degree. His description of a typical case of scarlet fever as he encountered it during the epidemic of "throat distemper" of 1735-1736 is the earliest description of scarlet fever in American medical literature and has been called "the first adequate clinical description of scarlet fever in English."1 It was vulgarly called the Throat Illness, or a Plague in the Throat. The first attack is somewhat of a chill or shivering; soon after follows Head ake or some other versatile spasmodick pains, as pain in the back, joints, side etc; a vomiting or nausea, or in some constitutions, which are not easily provoked to vomit, only a certain uneasiness or sickness at Stomach; at the same time the Uvula, but chiefly the Tonsils, were tumified, inflamed and painful, with some white specks, then follows a flush in the Face and some miliary eruptions there with a benign mild fever, the same efflorescence soon after appears on the neck, chest and extremities; the 3d or 4th Day, Eruption is at the hight [sic] and well defined with fair intervals; the flushing goes off gradually with a general itching and in a Day or two more the cuticle scales or peels off, especially in the extremities: At the same time the cream coloured sloughs or specks in the Fauces become loose and cast off, and tumeffactions there do subside.

[学科分类] 儿科学