Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

189/440 (page 171)

so important a branch of liis subject; but we prefer an appeal to positive facts. Chomel, we have already seen, states how very few patients ascribed their illness to any energetic cause. Five only out of 115 were placed ''in cir- cumstances favorable to contagion/' 79 could ''assign no appreciable cause (p. 306). In accordance with this I may state that, in no case, though questioned with the greatest care, either in Scotland or in the hospitals of Paris, have I ever found the disease referred to contagion. On the other hand, it appears from the statements regarding the epi- demics of Nancy by Leuret, of Chateau de Loire by Gendron, of Andlau and Stolzheim by Mistier, of Bischofsheim by Eeuf, and those contained in Bretonneau's memoirs (com- mented on by Gauthier de Claubry, from p. 118 to 135), and from the clear statements, borne out by dissections, of Lombard (in his valuable paper upon the Geneva epidemic of 1835, inserted in the 'Gazette Medicale'), seem to prove the possible transmission of typhoid fever, when epidemic. Without hazarding any decided conclusion on a point still so keenly debated, I would simply direct attention to the differ- ences as regards the probable origin and propagation of the two diseases, which the foregoing facts appear to establish ; and also to the interesting question, whether, if typhoid fever really depends on, and is propagated by a specific poison, that poison is, or is not generated in the same circumstances as the infection of typhus ? III. There are circumstances connected with the course of the two diseases well worthy of attention. The fact, as un- doubted as it is remarkable, that the mean duration of typhus is about one half that of typhoid fever, is one that perplexes considerably the advocates of their identity. Chomel argues (p. 337) that it only shows a difference of intensity. Gauthier de Claubry, who very judiciously does not venture to face the statistical details on the subject, and treats of it only under the head of the relative intensity of the two diseases, meets the objections on the same ground as Chomel. I have already remarked the extraordinary difference of the duration in the Glasgow epidemic of 1836. Hildenbrand states the mean duration of typhus at about twenty-two days, and that of the Glasgow typhus, from the