J. RUTHERFORD RILEY, M.R.C.S.,E.,

West Coast Times, Issue 202, 12 May 1866, Page 6

J. RUTHERFORD RILEY, M.R.C.5.,E.,

Surgeon Superintendent. Extract from the Report of the Surgeon Superintendent of the Hokitika Hospital. It will be seen from the table that we have now two of the three forms of continued fever known to English physicians, namely, typhoid, nnd relapsing or bilious remittent. The latter made its appearance in the hospital about two months ago, and appears in my last month's report as bilious fever. I think there was a caso of it about tiiis time last year, but the fever had disappeared before 1 saw the case, and it appears in my report as jaundice. It is a fever of short duration, generally accompanied by jaundice, and, like typhoid fever, endemic and engendered by paludal emanations. In the annual report of Dra. Custtck and Vickerman, of the Nelson Hospital, who have had thirty-five enses during the lust twehe months, 'there occurs (be following :— "Some doubt cxistsumong the Now Zealand medical men ns to the exact type of fiver prevalent in the colony. We have made careful post mortem exnniin.itions when practicable, and have met with some tiue cases of typhoid fever. Many cases present no distinctive anatomical lesion, and are probably relupsing fevers." The same doubt as to tho exact type of fever here has oecum d to my mind from the frequent absence of the characteristic eruption of typhoid fever. I regret to say that I have not looked for the anatomical lesion refei red to, namely ulceratjoii of the intestinal glands, and I have accounted for tho absence of the eruption occasionally, as all the other characteristic symptoms have been will marked, by the difference of climate and the cachexy produced in many of the cases by exposure to wet and cold, fatigue, and paludal emanations mentioned by Doctora Cusack and Vickerman as modifying cases of acute disease from Westland treated in the Nelson hospital,

I shall return to this subject, nnd as I have a much larger field for observation than the Nelson surgeons, my cases being numbered by the hundred, t hope to be 'able to throw some light on the mutter. ! (Signed) J. Rutherford Ryley, M.R.C.S.E., Surgeon-Superintendent. 1 Hospital, May 5, 1866.