Note 73 — OF THE Autumnal Remitting Fever.

Does this Fever, when accompanied with this universal Yellowness of the Skin, approach to the Nature of the yellow Fever of the West Indies? As I had so few Cases of this Kind under my Care, I cannot determine any thing about it from my own Experience; but, from the Accounts of others, I should believe them to be very different Disorders.—In the yellow Fever of the West Indies, the Blood appears quite loose and dissolved, without the least Appearance of Size, even on the first Day; and the general Yellowness appears on the third or fourth, with Signs of a total Dissolution, and gangrenous Diathesis of the Blood: Whereas, in the Remitting Fever of Jamaica, Mr. Nasmith tells us, (See Dr. Lind’s first Paper on Fevers), there is always an inflammatory Diathesis of the Blood. The Yellowness in both depends on a Redundancy and Absorption of Bile; but in the yellow Fever of the West Indies, the Bile is in a much more putrescent State, and a great Part of the Cure depends on the early and speedy Evacuation of it.—In the yellow Fevers which appeared in Haslar Hospital, which are taken Notice of by Dr. Lind, in his Two Papers on Fevers, the Blood was in quite a different State from what it is in the Yellow Fever of the West Indies; the Blood drawn from two of these Patients became covered with a thick yellow Gluten, and the Serum was of the Consistence of a thin Syrup, and of a deep yellow Tinge, and tasted bitter; and in another who was bled two Days before his Death, it threw up the same thick yellow Gluten, tho’ the red Part below was quite loose.