Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/591

 adequate cause: his countenance had an anxious expression; the skin was hot; the pulse small, rapid and weak; the tongue dry, and the stomach disturbed. He had, for some time, been occasionally troubled with patches of psoriasis on his left hand, and in this hand he had observed that he had sharp pain in the morning of the preceding day, at the dissection. Before going to bed, he had applied nitrate of silver to some patches of this kind, which he had been in the habit of doing when the patches felt uncomfortably. When Mr. Wickenden was examining the patches, Dr. Darwall complained of uneasy sensations in the arm, and a small gland in the axilla was found to be hot, painful on pressure, and hard. It now, for the first time, occurred to him, that the occurrences in the dissecting room might have some connection with his present state of disturbance.

The nature of the disorder became sufficiently clear to suggest the immediate recall of Mrs. Darwall and his daughters, from Malvern. By Mrs. Darwall's kindness I was, in a day or two, made acquainted with these unexpected and unwelcome circumstances. I shall hurry over the melancholy sequel. Little expecting how these symptoms would terminate, I only saw him occasionally during his short illness. Dr. John Johnstone, Dr. Male, Mr. Hodgson, and Mr. Wickenden, watched him with the utmost care, and for several days entertained pretty confident hopes of his recovery; or, at least, Mr. Wickenden's intimate knowledge of Dr. Darwall's peculiar constitution, led him alone to doubt