Essay on cholera infantum / by M.L. Knapp.

  • Knapp, M. L. (Moses L.), 1799-1879
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay on cholera infantum / by M.L. Knapp. 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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    observations occurred to me years before the truth was clearly established in my mind. I not only saw the scurvy left in patients who recovered from Cholera, but I saw it in many before the attack came on ; and as I shall illustrate by cases before I close this essay, successfully treated Cholera In- fantum as scurvy in infants, whose mothers labored under that form of it called Nursing Sore MoxttTi or Puerpural Ancemia, twenty years ago, by the administration of anti- scorbutic remedies. Since the year 1832, when Cholera Adultorum first be- came epidemic in the United States, the records of mortality for the city of New York, show that down to the close of the year 1853,12,044 adults have perished of it in that city, and 10,014 infants of Cholera Infantum. From 1804 to 1831 inclusive, 3,308 infants died of Cholera Infantum in New Tork, which swells the mortality from Chole7'a Infantum in that city, during the last half century, to 13,352 ; and from Infant and Adiclt Cholera united to 25,396 souls! I will now endeavor to illustrate the unity of these hitherto 6up])03ed two diseases, and the essentially scorbutic nature of the choleric disease, by the statistics of emigration: this constitutes an important chapter in its history. The blight in vegetation and dearth of provisions in Great Britain and Ireland, as well as on the continent, in 1847, caused thousands upon thousands of foreigners to emigrate to the United States. Over 100,000 emigrants left the Brit- ish Isles for this country during the first half of that year. The scurvy prevailed in England, Ireland, and Scotland to an awful extent, imputed to the blight of the potato, as may be seen by reference to the British medical journals of that year; and typhus fever and cholera were associated with it. An hundred thousand persons and more died that year in Ire- land alone; and nearly every Irish emigrant who came to this country had the inlaid and accumulated scorbutic de- pravity lying latent in his system. There is nothing unatural in the desire of the unfortunate Irish to abandon o2