High Temperature with Recovery.

A physician in Washington, D. C., prepared at one time a table from the reports of cases published during the past few years, of 45 cases, with a temperature of 110° and above, which have recovered.

He says: Is high temperature itself, necessarily fatal? The belief has long become classic, that no one can withstand a temperature which has ranged as high as 107.6°F. for any appreciable length of time. Moreover, certain French physiologists have claimed that an elevation to in for even a few minutes would destroy the leucocytes and that hence, under such conditions the death of the whole organism must necessarily ensue.

This is a question of the greatest interest and practical value to every practitioner, and the subject of hyperexia has lately been receiving considerable attention at the hands of medical journals. The mechanism and rationale of the condition has been so thoroughly discussed that further discussion would prove but wearisome repetition. We have in the present instance little inclination or time for either theory or verbiage.

Is high temperature per se necessarily fatal? Theoretical physiologists say yes, but the teachings of nature say very distinctly, not necessarily. This position is not necessary to uphold by argument. (The writer appends a table of 45 cases of recovery from temperature ranging from 110 to 157. The very lowest being 2.4 above the old classic "Dead line" of temperature.) Surely then he says we may reasonably conclude that hyperpyrexia is not necessarily, though usually fatal.

Ellingwood's Therapeutist, Vol. 2, 1908, was edited by Finley Ellingwood M.D.