A treatise on the public health, climate, hygeine [sic], and prevailing diseases, of Bengal and the North-West Provinces / By Kenneth Mackinnon.
- MacKinnon, Kenneth
- Date:
- 1848
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the public health, climate, hygeine [sic], and prevailing diseases, of Bengal and the North-West Provinces / By Kenneth Mackinnon. Source: Wellcome Collection.
70/438 page 32
![other ; and yet, alas ! there is a third class of diseases, incidental to all classes of society, attendiii]^ upon our race in all climates and all localities, visiting the tenant of the hut as well as the lord of the castle. The causes which determine public health, I divide into physical and moral, comprehending under the first head the influences of the external operatimis of nature, such as vicissi- tudes of temperature, heat, cold winds, malaria, &c. and under the second those social and moral peculiarities, habits, and in- stitutions which affect the health of a community. The physi- cal causes that prove injurious to the public health in Tirhoot are, as will be guessed from what has been said in the former parts of this memoir, sudden changes from heat to cold, and vice versa, bad drinking water, and exposure to the influence of malaria. This last cause is indeed the great source of disease, acting of course more or less virulently, according to different remote causes, and producing, according to the modified ope- Pliysicalcauses ration of such causes, fevers, dvsentery, cholera, &c. It affecting public . , , , , health. moreover to be observed, that in situations where the cause of malaria is ver}' concentrated, we have to expect that the community, as a mass, are of less robust health than people in more salubrious localities ; and hence we may expect that not only epidemics, but sporadic diseases, as they arise from their own peculiar causes, wdll prove more destructive to life. This is undoubtedly the case, as will no doubt admit of proof when medical statistics are more attended to than they have yet been in India—vicissitudes of temperature, as might be expected in a damp climate like Tirhoot, produce frequent catarrhal epi- demics. These are most frequent at the commencement of the cold weather, and again at the setting in of the hot season. I have never but once seen these visitations amount to what is usually called influenza. The sudden changes of temperature also add power to the activity of malaria. Indeed some au- thor.s hint at malaria being nothing but this, that in fact the localities where an active poison is supposed to be generated,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2870874x_0070.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
