sthenic

Some of its epidemics are sthenic and even inflammatory in their type, while others have the malignant aspect of rapid blood-poisoning.

It may be said, in general terms, to be variable in rate and strength even in the most sthenic cases of the disease, and in those which tend to a fatal issue to be small, thready, weak, intermittent, or imperceptible for a longer or shorter time before death.

It is evident that venesection, which was necessary for procuring the living blood for analysis, would only be performed when the type of the disease authorized it—that is, when the type was sthenic; whereas the blood examined after death had necessarily undergone changes which tended to, if they did not actually, occasion death.

Our own experience would lead us to conclude that in the more sthenic cases scarified cups, applied to the nape of the neck and along the cervical vertebr�, are of essential service in mitigating—and generally, indeed, in wholly removing—the neuralgic pains which form so prominent and severe a symptom in many cases of this disease.

Even Currie of Edinburgh, who first drew attention to the benefit from the cold-water treatment of scarlet fever in an age when the sweating treatment, and even the exclusion of cool and fresh air from the apartment, were deemed necessary, recommended cold affusion only in sthenic cases with full and strong pulse, and he mentions as a warning two cases with quick and feeble pulse and cool extremities in which death occurred immediately after the use of the water.