The common nature of epidemics, and their relation to climate and civilization : also remarks on contagion and quarantine : from writings and official reports / by the late Thomas Southwood Smith ; edited by T. Baker.

  • Thomas Southwood Smith
Date:
[1866]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The common nature of epidemics, and their relation to climate and civilization : also remarks on contagion and quarantine : from writings and official reports / by the late Thomas Southwood Smith ; edited by T. Baker. 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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    space allowed to each prisoner ranges from 819 to 935 cubic feet. Not a single case of cholera, nor even of diarrhoea, occurred among the prisoners in this jail. The town^s people also escaped, while in the overcrowded workhouses, 22 per cent, of the total number of the in- habitants were swept away. In the village of East Earleigh, near Maidstone, 1000 per- sons were assembled for hop-picking’. .They were lodged in sheds, and had about eighty cubic feet for breathing space: in a few days diarrhoea became universal among them : ninety-seven were attacked with cholera, and forty-six died. In the same village, at the same time, under another em- ployer who had provided proper accommodation for his labourers, there was a complete immunity from the epidemic. I could add cases of the like kind without number. I could show that animals are affected by this cause of disease no less than men; that horses overcrowded in stables die of glanders; dogs in overcrowded kennels die of distemper; sheep overcrowded in ships, even during a short passage from one country to another, die in great numbers of febrile diseases : * results which prove the operation of a general law of nature. I could adduce equally decisive examples of the action of each of the principal external predisposing causes just enumerated. It has been often said that we cannot tell the difference between the air of the mountain-side and that of the crowded hospitals and fever nests of towns. If it were so, it would be sufficient to say. Life is a more delicate test than Chemistry. But it is not so. The impurities in these pernicious places can be detected by chemical analysis, and examined as readily as the constituents of the atmo- sphere itself. * It has been alleged that the Cattle Plague owed its existence to these among perhaps other kindred causes, and human Epidemics have frequently been preceded or accompanied by a murrain among Cattle. See p. 7, and Boa Vista fever, pot, [Ed.]