Abnormally high temperatures occasionally may be encountered in practically any disease characterized by fever. There are a few conditions, however, in which excessive elevations of temperature are more or less constant and in themselves somewhat diagnostic. The outstanding condition in which hyperthermia is the most conspicuous and characteristic symptom is thermic fever or heat stroke. It is also commonly seen in brain and spinal cord injuries, whether traumatic or surgical in origin. Finally, in this connection must be mentioned the authenticated instances of record-breaking temperatures in hysteria. The term hyperthermia is used in this paper, as defined in most medical dictionaries, to mean "an abnormally high temperature," and is thus synonymous with the term hyperpyrexia, which is arbitrarily understood to be any temperature above 105 or 106 F.
My interest in hyperthermia is the result of its occurrence as one of the principal symptoms of a rather characteristic syndrome encountered