Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

183/440 (page 165)

likewise comes to tlie same conclusions; Copland,^ ex- pressly . points out the influence of tlie circumstance in question, in producing liigbly infectious and typlioid form3 of fever. How, indeed, is it possible, except on this supposition, to explain the appearance of typhus in a country, and in tlie midst of armies, perfectly healthy, till the development of the conditions in question, but which, under their influence, were desolated by a pestilence, whose ravages, more finght- ful than those of war, consigned many, whom the sword had spared, to an ever-yawning and never-satisfied grave Wo cannot, in order to account for this, admit the idea, that, by some strange and inexplicable principle of election, infectious miasmata direct their course from distant shores to the seat of war, especially when we see in their invariable antecedence and sequence, the relation of cause and effect so clearly made out between the conditions referred to, and the appearance of the disease. What reasonable cause can be assigned for the murderous epidemic that arose, in the spring of 1810, on board the Plymouth prison-ships, and cannot be referred to contagion or infection, as the disease first declared itself among the prisoners confined in what have been well termed these floating tombs, if not the very natural one of the long-continued confinement of hundreds of persons, in a situation uniting all the conditions most adverse to health ? These considerations are borne out by the un- disputed fact, that the type of fever becomes much more malignant in hospitals crowded to excess, and by Gauthier de Claubry's curious statements at p. 148 of his work, where, speaking of the treatment of typhus, he mentions that, during the wars of the empire, patients previously despaired of, notwithstanding the assiduous use of thera- peutic agents, were quickly restored to health, on the eva- cuation of the hospitals, with fresh air, barley-water, and lemonade. How completely does this agree with the experience of Pringle, as quoted above. Let me further refer to a paper by Dr. Peebles, in the forty-fourth volume (No. 125) of the 'Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal,' as detail- ing the results of his own experience in Italy, and giving a 1 Alt. Infection, p. 352.