Memoranda on Asiatic cholera : its mode of spreading, and its prevention / by William Budd.

  • William Budd
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoranda on Asiatic cholera : its mode of spreading, and its prevention / by William Budd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    INTRODUCTION. Obsta principiis As Europe is once more invaded by Asiatic Cholera, I have thought it my duty to place the following brief Memoranda on the Propagation and Prevention of that pestilence in a separate form before the public. The first in order, but not in date, are two Memoranda which were submitted by me in 1861, through the Inspector General of Her Majesty's Hospitals, to the Special Commission appointed to enquire into the Cholera Epidemic of 1861 in Northern India. The method for preventing the spread of Cholera set forth in these Memoranda, was embodied by the Commissioners in the preventive code drawn up by them; and the Papers themselves were honoured with a prominent place in their Report. The evidence adduced in these documents, is intended to support the theory that Asiatic Cholera is propagated exclusively by the characteristic discharges from the intestinal canal of persons affected with it; and further to show, that, under given conditions, the spread of the disease may be prevented by a plan which I was the first to suggest and employ, so long ago as 1849 :—viz., by destroying by disinfectants, the specific powers of these discharges, immediately on their issue from the body. The evidence which I have myself collected, in proof of these two propositions, has already in part appeared. I have much more in reserve, and should time permit I hope to place the whole before the public, at no distant period, in a complete and system- atic form. Meanwhile these brief notes will, perhaps, as being more quickly read and mastered, serve the present purpose better than a larger and more elaborate performance. The need of new and more detailed evidence is the less pressing, because, under conditions which admit of being easily defined— such, for instance, as those which were found in the outbreak of Cholera at the Horfield Barracks, of which a narrative is sub-
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