[1297] “Angina and Scarlet Fever of 1778.” Mem. Med. Soc. III. 355.
[1298] James Johnstone, junr. M.D., A Treatise on the Malignant Angina or Putrid and Ulcerous Sore-Throat, &c. Worcester, 1779.
[1299] Robert Saunders, Observations on the Sore-Throat and Fever in the North of Scotland in 1777. London, 1778.
[1300] William Withering, M.D., Account of the Scarlet Fever and Sore-Throat, particularly as it appeared at Birmingham in 1778. London, 1779; preface dated 1st January.
[1301] Withering was perhaps too desirous to be thought the first in England to have described scarlatina anginosa. “The scarlet fever in its simple state,” he says, “is not a very uncommon disease in England, but its combination with a sore-throat, as described above, the violence of its attack, and the train of fatal symptoms that follow, are circumstances hitherto unnoticed by English writers.” It is probable from this that he had not seen Levison’s essay, with preface dated 11 May, 1778, his own being dated 1 January, 1779; but Cotton’s essay of 1749 actually bore the name of scarlet fever on its title-page, and described the throat-affection, glandular swellings, and the like quite correctly.
The name of the elder Heberden is frequently brought into the history of the identification of scarlatina, with a reference to his Commentaries on Diseases, which were not published until 1802, some time after his death at a very advanced age. The following are among his remarks: “In the fever which has just been described there is always some degree of redness in the skin, and the throat is not without an uneasy sensation. Where it happens that the throat is full of little ulcers attended with considerable pain, there the disease, though the skin be ever so red, is not denominated from the colour, but from the soreness of the throat, and obtains the name of malignant sore-throat; and many suppose that the two disorders differ in nature as well as in name,” p. 23. “The enfeebled and disordered state of all the functions of the body evidently points out such a malignity of the fever as cannot be owing to the affection of the uvula or tonsils, which in other distempers we often see ulcerated and eaten away, without any danger of the patient’s life. These sores, therefore, like pestilential buboes, point out the nature of the disorder; but the danger arises, not from them, but from the fever,” p. 25.
In 1790 an elaborate attempt was made by William Lee Perkins, M.D. (dating from Hampton Court, 1 March) to distinguish between cynanche maligna and scarlatina anginosa, in An Essay for a Nosological and Comparative View of the Cynanche Maligna or Putrid Sore-Throat, and the Scarlatina Anginosa. London, 1790. He proceeds by the nosological method of Sauvages and Cullen, erecting genera, species and varieties. The result is not clear after all; for on p. 43 (note) we read that scarlatina is frequently accompanied with inflammatory and ulcerous appearances in the fauces or throat, and that angina maligna or ulcerated sore-throat is often attended with red efflorescence on the skin; this had led to their being regarded as one and the same, and treated by the same method of cure.
[1302] J. Parker, A Treatise on the Putrid Constitution of 1777 and the preceding years, and the Pestilential one of 1778. London, 1779 (of inferior value beside Withering’s).
[1303] Heysham, in Hutchinson’s Hist. of Cumberland, u. s.
[1304] John Clark, M.D., Obs. on Fevers, and on the Scarlet Fever with Ulcerated Sore-Throat at Newcastle in 1778. Lond. 1780; Account of the Newcastle Dispensary from its commencement in 1777 to Michaelmas, 1789. Newcastle, 1789 (also by Clark).