Presidential address at the Epidemiological Society, delivered on November 5th, 1879 / by Joseph Fayrer.

  • Joseph Fayrer
Date:
[1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Presidential address at the Epidemiological Society, delivered on November 5th, 1879 / by Joseph Fayrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    S'6 15 outbreaks have occurred in eight weeks, each following the arrival of a boat or vessel. It has been suggested that the sudden contact of a people, under exceptional circumstances as regards food and occupation, with strangers, is the cause which seems to exercise an infectious influence on them, though what the nature of it is no one knows. Again, on the river Amazon, speaking of the gradual exhaustion of certain tribes friendly to the whites who inhabit the country near Ega, Mr. Bates says: “ The principal cause of their decay in numbers seems to be a disease which always appears amongst them when a village is visited by people from the civilised settlements—a slow fever accompanied by the symptoms of a common cold, de jiuxo, as the Brazilians term it, ending in consumptibn. The disorder has been known to break out when the visitors were entirely free from it, the simple contact of civilised men in some mysterious way being sufficient to create it.” A still more recent, as well as a more strictly parallel, illustration of the occurrence of the malady in question in another part of the globe is contained in the account of the cruise of H.M.S. Galatea, in 1867-68, where the following statement occurs :—“ Tristan d’Acunha is a re- markably healthy island; but it is a singular fact that any vessel touching there from St. Helena invariably brings with it a disease resembling influenza. St. Kilda, off the west coast of Scotland, is known to be similarly affected whenever a party lands amongst the people from any vessel. Whatever may be the real cause of the mysterious ailment— whether it is produced by contagion, like certain other epidemic diseases, or by a feverish excitement arising from a contact of a higher with a lower civilisation—the actual occurrence of the distemper seems to be fully established; and the experiences of Ega and Tristan d’Acunha afford interesting illustrations of somewhat similar results in many different parts of the world.” Does not this seem to point to some subtle influence, the nature of which is unknown as yet ? May not this in some measure account for the rapid decrease of the population of the South Sea Islands after contact with Europeans; and is it not pregnant with suggestive ideas as to the nature and the cause of transmission and diffusion of other epidemic diseases ? To return to cholera. In the present state of our knowledge we can only be guided by the inferences from well-ascertained facts and such laws as we have ascertained to be in constant operation, watching and carefully observing until we may, were it only by a process of exclusion, arrive at some deeper knowledge still. “ So far,” says the chief sanitary authority in India, “ the history of cholera is full of enigmas and seeming contradictions ; and though we have of late years collected many valuable data, and understood the importance of studying them on a broad basis, we know no more of the exact cause of the disease than our grandfathers did. We know that, whatever the cause may be, it flourishes in the midst of insanitary conditions of dirt and overcrowding, and especially of impure water, impure from whatever cause; we know that it is liable to occur under certain conditions, and at certain times and seasons, and we should endeavour to extend that knowledge, and hope, as we do so, to arrive at the precise nature of the disease itself.” But it may be well to remember that “ expenditure of public money must take place only on
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