I shall now deliver a short account of the symptoms of the yellow fever, as they appeared in several of the different systems of the body.
I. There was but little difference in the state of the pulse in this epidemic from what has been recorded in the fevers of 1793 and 1794. I perceived a pulse, in several cases, which felt like a soft quill which had been shattered by being trodden upon. It occurred in Dr. Jones and Dr. Dobell, and in several other persons who had been worn down by great fatigue, and it was, in every instance, followed by a fatal issue of the fever. In Dr. Jones this state of the pulse was accompanied with such a difficulty of breathing, that every breath he drew, on the day of his attack, he informed me, was the effort of a sigh. He died on the 17th of September, and on the sixth day of his fever.
The action of the arteries was, as usual, very irregular in many cases. In some there was a distressing throbbing of the vessels in the brain, and in one of my patients a similar sensation in the bowels, but without pain. Many people had issues of blood from their blisters in this fever.
I saw nothing new in the effects of the fever upon the liver, lungs, brain, nor upon the stomach and bowels.
II. The excretions were distinguished by no unusual marks. I met with no recoveries where there were not black stools. They excoriated the rectum in Dr. Way. It was a happy circumstance where morbid bilious matter came away in the beginning of the disease. But it frequently resisted the most powerful cathartics until the 5th or 7th day of the fever, at which time it appeared rather to yield to the disorganization of the liver than to medicine. Where sufficient blood-letting had been previously used, the patient frequently recovered, even after the black discharges from the bowels took place in a late stage of the disease.
Dr. Coxe informed me, that he attended a child of seventeen months old which had white stools for several days. Towards the close of its disease it had black stools, and soon afterwards died.
Several of my patients discharged worms during the fever. In one instance they were discharged from the mouth.
A preternatural frequency in making pale water attended the first attack of the disease in Mr. Joseph Fisher.