Observations, &c. on the epidemic disease, which lately prevailed at Gibraltar : intended to illustrate the nature of contagious fevers in general. [Pt. I] / by Seguin Henry Jackson.

  • Jackson, Seguin Henry, 1752-1816
Date:
1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations, &c. on the epidemic disease, which lately prevailed at Gibraltar : intended to illustrate the nature of contagious fevers in general. [Pt. I] / by Seguin Henry Jackson. 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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    ordure or defilement of it. Vapours from diseased bodies con- stitute contagion. But, when they are (originally) resident in the air, and have arisen from animal or vegetable matter, they are then called miasmata. Miasmata may very naturally be disposed to be various, but that with which we are best acquainted, is the miasma, which arises from marshy grounds, and places liable to inundations, and is produced always by the concurrence of heat and moisture.. 59. Heat will not produce this miasma, provided the earth be at the same time dry : nevertheless, epidemic disorders have been supposed to rage in climates under such circumstances. Neither will moisture alone produce it; as it is never produced from pure lakes and seas. This is sufficiently proved by the annual etTects of the flowing of the Nile. However, that vapour, which is generated from filth, and confined heated air in gaols, hospitals, and all partially ventilated places, partakes, I should suppose, of the nature of contagion, rather than of miasma. 60. In general; the miasma arising from marshy grounds is looked upon as occasioning fevers of the intermittent kind, and probably the autumnal tertians in all countries, which may often be considered as tertian epidemics. These may, by a too heating regimen in a hot climate, become the bilious remittent fever, and terminate fatally. When marsh miasma produces the intermittent, there is reason to suppose that it has its operation through the nervous system; and when the autumnal tertian has been converted into the bilious remittent I fever by a too heating regimen, I imagine an enteritis, or the inflammatory state of the prim£E vice, has been occasioned, ac- companied by a fever bearing the character of a synochus (48). 6]. As contagion is so much the theme of public appre- hension, I shall add some further opinions respecting its general character, and application to disease; but the subject is too diffuse to introduce every thing, which has been said upon the subject. . The origin of epidemic and endemic dis- orders has been supposed to arise from the atmosphere, by the