Lecture on the action of the cholera poison on the body, and its nature and history outside the body : delivered at a meeting of the Bengal branch of the Brit. Med. Assn. on the 19th January, 1870 : and the discussion of the subject on the 31st January and 8th February, 1870 / by John Murray.

  • John Murray
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lecture on the action of the cholera poison on the body, and its nature and history outside the body : delivered at a meeting of the Bengal branch of the Brit. Med. Assn. on the 19th January, 1870 : and the discussion of the subject on the 31st January and 8th February, 1870 / by John Murray. 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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    from an. atmospheric influence, the precise nature of which was not yet definitely determined. De. Chaeles said Mr. President,—Eising as I do at this late hour of the evening, for many reasons I think it better that I should confine the remarks I have to make to the one question of communicability, on which so many speakers have already expressed their views. There are very many other points iu Dr. Murray’s paper which would have deserved discussion had time permitted, but it seems to me of considerable importance that the views held by each member of the society on the question of the communicability of cholera should now be freely expressed, and to allow of this I shall make my remarks as brief as possible. There is one phase of the arguments which, I think, in to- night’s discussion has hardly been fairly dealt with. In assuming a materies morli, Dr. Murray does nothing more than we are all daily in the habit of doing. It does not seem to me just to meet him with a protest that, unless it can be shown under a microscope, unless it has form and shape, unless it has been described under a name, and so forth, that such a hypo- thetical existence is simply a creation of the fancy. How do we deal in the case of other diseases in which the agency producing them is not recognisable by any method of research at our command. We assume that there is a cause for the effect which we see, and we are not unwilling to learn as much as we can gather regarding the nature of the cause and its behaviour under varying conditions. We all believe in a malaria which we can in no way distinguish by any means which wo have yet brought to bear on it. A contagion of typhus and small-pox, of scarlatina and measles, and hooping cough, finds a place in every medical man’s belief, although in no case can we say we have seen the cause which leads to such results. It is true that an American observer thought at one time, he had seen a fungus which he believed to have the power of producing measles, but as yet his observations do not seem to have met with
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