Page:Tropical Diseases.djvu/340

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298
DENGUE
[CHAP.

a proportion of cases, and particularly in certain epidemics, crisis does not occur, the fever slowly declining during a period of three or four days. Thus the urgent symptoms abate, and the patient rapidly, or more slowly, passes from what, in many cases, may be described as the agony of the first stage to the comparative calm and comfort of the second.

'The interval.— When the second stage is established and the thermometer has sunk to normal, the patient is sufficiently well to leave his bed and even to attend to business. An occasional twinge in leg, arm, or finger, or a tenderness of the soles of the feet, and perhaps giddiness in walking, may remind him of what he has gone through and warn him that he is not quite well yet. But the tongue cleans, and the appetite and sense of well-being return to some extent.

Terminal fever and eruption.— This state of comparatively good health continues to the fourth, fifth, sixth, or even to the seventh day, counting from the commencement of the illness. Then there is generally a return of fever, slight in most cases, more severe in others. It is usually of very short duration— a few hours. Sometimes this secondary fever does not occur; probably it is often overlooked. With the recurrence of the fever an eruption of a rubeolar character appears. The pains likewise return, perhaps in more than their original severity. Though the fever subsides in a few hours, the eruption, at times very evanescent, may keep out for two or three days longer, to be followed very generally by an imperfect furfuraceous desquamation. It seldom happens that the fever or pains at this stage keep the patient in bed, although that is the best place for him if a comfortable and speedy convalescence is desired. Rarely, in this secondary fever, does the thermometer rise to 103 F. The temperature falls rapidly to below normal on the setting-in of diaphoresis, or diarrhœa, or of some form of crisis.

Characters of the eruption.— The terminal eruption of dengue possesses very definite characters. It is absent in a very few cases only; in many of those