A discharge of an unusual quantity of urine preceded, a few hours, the death of the daughter of Mrs. Read.
In two of my patients there was a total suppression of urine. In one of them it continued five days without exciting any pain.
There was no disposition to sweat after the first and second days of the fever. Even in those states of the fever, in which the intermissions were most complete, there was seldom any moisture, or even softness on the skin. This was so characteristic of malignity in the bilious fever, that where I found the opposite state of the skin, towards the close of a paroxysm, I did not hesitate to encourage my patient, by assuring him that his fever was of a mild nature, and would most probably be safe in its issue.
III. I saw no unusual marks of the disease in the nervous system. The mind was seldom affected by delirium after the loss of blood. There was a disposition to shed tears in two of my patients. One of them wept during the whole time of a paroxysm of the fever. In one case I observed an uncommon dulness of apprehension, with no other mark of a diseased state of the mind. It was in a man whose faculties, in ordinary health, acted with celerity and vigour.
Dr. Caldwell informed me of a singular change which took place in the operations of his mind during his recovery from the fever. His imagination carried him back to an early period of his life, and engaged him, for a day or two, in playing with a bow and arrow, and in amusements of which he had been fond when a boy. A similar change occurred in the mind of my former pupil, Dr. Fisher, during his convalescence from the yellow fever in 1793. He amused himself for two days in looking over the pictures of a family Bible which lay in his room, and declared that he found the same kind of pleasure in this employment that he did when a child. However uninteresting these facts may now appear, the time will come when they may probably furnish useful hints for completing the physiology and pathology of the mind.
Where blood-letting had not been used, patients frequently died of convulsions.
IV. The senses of seeing and feeling were impaired in several cases. Mrs. Bradford's vision was so weak that she hardly knew her friends at her bed-side. I had great pleasure in observing this alarming symptom suddenly yield to the loss of four ounces of blood.
Several persons who died of this fever did not, from the beginning to the end of the disease, feel any pain. I shall hereafter endeavour to explain the cause of this insensible state of the nerves.
The appetite for food was unimpaired for three days in Mr. Andrew Brown, at a time when his pulse indicated a high grade of the fever. I heard of several persons who ate with avidity just before they died.