Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

186/440 (page 168)

liealtliy poraon. Tlie difference, in this point of view, between infection and contagion is one of degree^ and not of kind; and there are cases of morbid impression, wliicli it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to refer either to the one or to the other, so imperceptibly do they glide into each other. It is natural, however, to conclude that, as the genus includes the species, so a disease that is first produced by the action of a specific infectious agent on the animal economy, must be directly transmissible from a person diseased to a person in health. To argue at any length in favour of the transmission of typhus, whether through the medium of the atmosphere, or by the direct inhalation of the morbific inatter from a persom labouring under its effects, would be a waste of time. It is admitted all but univer- sally. The fearful rapidity with which it extends its ravages; the great number of cases in which patients refer their complaint to living with, or attending others affected with it; the all but universal occurrence of the disease in nurses and resident medical attendants, put beyond a doubt the communication of the disease. Lassis, shortly after pub- lishing his ingenious work, ' Recherches sur les Yeritables Causes de Typhus, ou de la Non-contagion des Maladies Typhoides,' fell a victim to the contagion, the existence of which he denied. Need I further refer for the proof of this position to the nam'es of Sydenham, Morton, Pringle, Hux- ham, Hildenbrand, Chomel, Tweedie, Roupell, Grauthier de Claubry, Montault, Lombard, indeed to almost all the writers on the subject ? The facts stated by Tweedie, from p. 85 to p. 99 of his treatise, by Gauthier de Claubry (p. 100 to 114), and by Dr. West in his able paper on Exan- thematic Typhus,'' in the fiftieth volume of the ' Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,' are conclusive as to the com- munication of typhus to medical attendants, nurses, and patients labouring under other complaints, and they are com- pletely borne out by my own experience. It is well known, that, for many years past, every resident clerk in the Glas- gow Infirmary, with very rare exceptions, many students who frequented the fever wards, several of the acting physi- cians, and almost all the nurses, have, at Dne time or other, been attacked with typhus, and that not a few have fallen