The cyclopaedia of practical medicine: comprising treatises on the nature and treatment of diseases, materia medica and therapeutics, medical jurisprudence, etc., etc (Volume 2).
- Date:
- 1849-59
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The cyclopaedia of practical medicine: comprising treatises on the nature and treatment of diseases, materia medica and therapeutics, medical jurisprudence, etc., etc (Volume 2). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![the state of sleep, or even when it is exposed to them in the night air without sleep. It has also been ohserved, in illustration of the ague-giving qualities of the east-wind, that some time, even days or weeks, after an exposure to marsh mias- mata has taken place without producing any per- ceptible bad effect, the casual blowing of the east- wind has at once fixed an attack of ague. Sea- water flowing over marshy ground, cspleris pari- bus, seems to give rise to more pernicious effluvia than fresh water. The bogs or peat-mosses of Scotland and Ireland, on the other hand, do not appear to generate ague. Dr. [Sir James] Clark, in his late work On the influence of Climate, states, that with regard to Rome, at the present time, a certain period of residence in the malaria site is necessary, in gene- ral, to prepare the body for its attack; and that there is no reason for the fear commonly enter- tained of a sudden attack of malaria from simply passing quickly through a malaria district. The German, French, and English artists were more frequently attacked with fever the second or third years of their residence at Rome than the first. But the situation of this city will not bear an ex- act comparison with that of a pure marshy district. Seamen, who after a long voyage venture to land on a marshy shore in the height of the Rea- son, too often find that if they remain a single night on land they are attacked by the endemic fever almost immediately. Hence it has often hap- pened that vessels coming to a maritime city, on the eve of a pestilential visitation, although with clean bills of health, have been among the fir^t to show s'gns of disease in some of the crew, and the fact has been eagerly laid hold of to counte- nance the suspicion that contagion from the vessel gave rise to the distemper; for it need not be told that mariners who have been long at sen are very susceptible of morbid impressions from a vitiated at- mosphere on first coming to land in a sickly season. As a common rule, regular sufficient diet af- fords some protection against the influence of ma- laria; and fatigue, low living, debauch, night- watching, and irregularity of every kind, favour its attack. In temperate climates, where these miasmata abound, the practice of over-excitement with stimuli will do less harm than in hot countries. 2. Broncliocele.—From the line in Juvenal, Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibusl it would seem that the swelled throat was so com- mon a complaint in the Alps in his time, as not to excite any wonder. It is still found in the valleys of the Alps, and in some other mountain- ous countries, as the Pyrenees, the province of Behar in India, in Derbyshire, &c. It has been observed also in some mountainous parts of Java and Sumatra; but it is rare in Scotland ; and Dr. Reeve states that it is very common in Norfolk. Mungo Park observed the bronchocele in differ- ent parts of Bambara, in Africa, along the course of the river Niger. Females are far more liable to it than males. The opinion that snow-water is the cause of this complai'it appears to be quite luifounded; nor can we ascribe it to the use of water impregnated with calcareous earth. Yet it is probable that air, water, and diet, each contribute something towards the cause. Sir S. Raffles tells us that there is a village near the foot of the Teng'gar mountains in Java, where every family is afflicted by this malady; while in another vil- lage, situated at a greater elevation, and through which the stream descends that serves for the use of both, there exists no such deformity. In the pro^^nce of Behar in India, there is a district called Tirhoot, (Calcutta Transactions, 1829, and Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journal, No. 106), in which bronchocele is common among the natives : and a singular circumstance regarding it is, that on a small river of the district it is not uncommon to see a village on each bank, and quite contiguous, the one with scarcely an indivi- dual exempt from the complaint, while in the other the inhabitants are perfectly free from it. Dr. Johnson cogently remarks, (Med. Chir. Rev. vol. vi. p. 422,) that we obser\'e goitre more abundant in some than in other parts of Switzer- land, though the diet is the same. In the valley of the Rhone we see hardly any thing else than cretins and goitres; while in the valley of Cha- mouny, separated only by the Col de Balme, we see very few of either disease. We trace bron- chocele along the whole course of the Rhine, from Schafhausen to Cologne; it gradually decreases as we descend the Rhine; and among those who inhabit the banks and drink the waters of the up- per or turbid Rhone (in the Vallais) there are twenty goitres and cretins for one that can be seen on the banks of the lower or filtered Rhone. Taken in connexion with the Rhine, it forms (in his opinion) a strong ground of presumption in favour of the goitrifaciive influence of alpine wa- ters. Dr. Johnson, however, does not ascribe all the effect to the waters; and he adds, that Eng- lish children (who live as well as people in England) cannot be kept long at Geneva without having enlargements of the thyroid gland. He concludes, therefore, that the cause cannot be traced to sour bread, as Dr. Drug imagined, or to any particular article of diet, except water.* Notwithstanding the foregoing testimonies, the observation of Dr. Mason Good is very important, that at Matlock in Derbyshire he found a large number of the poor affected with bronchocele, while the rich escaped ; and by far the greater part were exposed to all the ordinary evils of poverty. (See Study of Med. vol. v. p. 309.) Bronchocele has been observed to prevail most in situations where humidity is joined with ex- cessive heat; and it is found to increase in spring, and to diminish in autumn. Upon the whole, a more ample induction is required before the true causes of the complaint can be determined: the probability seems to be that these are not uniform, or, at least, that they are liable to be much varied; and that a peculiar combination of air, food, and water has much to do in causing the complaint * In the work of this able writer and pliilosopliic ob- server, lately published, entitled, Tour of Health, &c. hi-says Ur. B.illy, a native of a goitrous district in Switzerland, states the following very important fact. BroMchoc.-le appears to me to be produced hy certain w^ators winch issue from the hollows of rocks, trickle nf7,'f lf.,h '., ''/■'^. •■ 'spring from the bowels of the earth, that this is the case I m«y instance some famil.es in iny own country. Dopartement du I,eman.au Ilameau de 1 huct, the use of whose waters will in e/rM or Icn days produce or au?menl goitrous swellins Such of the inhalntants of the above village as avoid those waters are free from goitre and cretinism.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21116817_0044.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
