Two cases of post-typhoid anæmia : with remarks on the value of examinations of the blood in typhoid fever / by W.S. Thayer.

  • William Sydney Thayer
Date:
[1894?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two cases of post-typhoid anæmia : with remarks on the value of examinations of the blood in typhoid fever / by W.S. Thayer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    A glance at the appended charts * shows that in Case I a man who must have had a normal blood on entrance, showed a fall of over 3,000,000 on the 31st day of the disease. Whether this represented really the lowest point, or whether during the week before it had been yet lower, one cannot say. The patient was at this time practi- cally afebrile; the fever he had after this was in all probability the fever of anaemia. Three months afterwards, at the time of the dis- charge, the blood had not yet reached its normal condition. In Case II the fall in the number of red corpuscles had already begun on the tenth day of the disease, the number of red corpuscles being 4,092,000, a loss of at least 1,000,000. In the next seven days, during the second and third weeks, before the temperature had reached the normal point, there was a loss of 1,866,000 corpuscles. This fall continued during the next nineteen days, during which time the patient lost 94,400 corpuscles to the cubic millimetre. The lowest point occurred when the patient was probably free from his disease, the fever present at that time being probably the fever of ansemia. In this case, then, we see a gradual fall in the number of red corpuscles from the beginning, which was accentuated toward the latter part of the febrile period; the fall extended into the period of the beginning of convalescence. The curve is thus similar to that described by the majority of observers who have been mentioned above, while it corresponds entirely with our observations in cases where the loss of corpuscles was slight and unimportant. On the ninety-fourth day after the beginning of the disease the blood had not yet reached the normal point. The haemoglobin in both cases was diminished in greater propor- tion than the number of the corpuscles. * Before commenting on the charts it may be well to state what we consider to be the normal number of red and colorless corpuscles to the cubic millimetre of blood. There are marked variances between the results of different observers, depending probably on slight differences in instruments and technique, and oftentimes a con- sideration of the individual standard of each observer will assist considerably in elucidating the results. From the counts made in Prof. Osier's clinic by Dr. J. S. Billings, Jr., and the writer, we are inclined to place the normal number of red corpuscles between 5 and 6,000,000, with the mean nearer 5,500,000 than it is to 5,000,000, while the mean normal number of leucocytes we have found to be not far from 7,000 to the cmm. A discussion of this whole question, with an interesting table showing the changes in the number of red and colorless corpuscles in a healthy individual at different times of the day, will be found in the work of Reinert.(46)