Remarks on the scurvy as it appeared among the English prisoners in France, in the year 1795 : with an account of the effects of opium in that disease, and of the methods proper to render its use more extensive and easy; (written during his confinement in the Tower) / by R.T. Crosfeild.

  • Robert Thomas Crosfeild
Date:
1797
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the scurvy as it appeared among the English prisoners in France, in the year 1795 : with an account of the effects of opium in that disease, and of the methods proper to render its use more extensive and easy; (written during his confinement in the Tower) / by R.T. Crosfeild. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    * [ 39 ] In all the cafes of difeafe originating from con- tagion that I have been able to trace, delirium is feldom or never an early fymptom: in the worft cafes of the final 1-pox the patient is very rarely delirious for feveral days. But when difeafes arife from the conftitution of the air, the cafe is widely different, and the firft attack is often difcovered by a derangement of intellect. In thofe fatal maladies that attack Europeans who refide in fome parts of Africa during the rainy feafon, a kind of light delirium often precedes every other fymptom; when the angina maligna rages epide- mically this is often the firft harbinger of the difeafe; when the plague ravaged London in 166', it feems to have been preceded by an epi- demic delirium, which manifefted itfelf among the people by frantic pretences to prophecy and power of feeing fpedtres; and finally, whilft I was in France, a gentleman, who was not in the way of any infection, was feized with a violent fever, which firft declared itfelf by his being taken de- lirious whilft fitting at breakfaft. We may perhaps then make early delirium a criterion of an epide- mic generated upon the fpot, and not imported from any foreign climate; nor, in faft, do I believe there ever was an inftance of an epidemic being brought out of one country into another: one or two perfons may certainly be infedled by this mode of communication, but to enable the conta- gion to fpread to any extent, many other circum- fiances muft concur. THE END, f