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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![[About the time cholera first made its appear- ance in England, in 1832, Dr. Prout noticed a positive increase in the weight of the air, similar to what might be produced by the difi'usion of a | heavy gaseous principle through the lower regions of the atmosphere. Sec art. Cuolera, Epidemic, p. 421.] Tliere can be little difTiculty in tracing a con- nection between intemperature of the seasons and famine or unvvholusome food; and the relation of the latter to the production of epidemic pestilence is more clearly manifest when we consider that its violence almost invariably falls upon the poor. It is a remark of Dr. IVlead, deduced from his pre- vious enquiries, and confirmed by every pestilen- tial epidemic subsequent to his time, that it has never been known when the plague did not first begin among the poor. This observation is strengthened by the histories of the yellow fever in America and in the south of Spain, of the cho- lera in the east, and of our own epidemic fever, particularly in Ireland. The poor are the chief victims, because they are principally subjected to the exciting causes. (^Heberden, On the Increase and Decrease of Disease, &c.) Mortality among some tribes of the lower ani- mals not unfrequently follows intemperature of the seasons. Sometimes this mortality is noticed among dogs, cats, horses, and mules ; and some- times among sheep and cattle used as the food of man. In the pestilence that raged at New Or- leans in 1819, we are told that the cattle died :— horses, oxen, and cows with rotten tongues; sheep and hogs with their hoofs dropping off, and calves with rotten ears. Dr. Hodges bears a very striking testimony to this fact in his Loimologia, or Account of the Plague of London in 166.5 :— Many knowing persons, he observes, ascribed the pestilence to the quantity of bad meat from tlie preceding sickness among the cattle, which was sold so cheap to the poor that they fed upon it even to gluttony. It is incredible to think how it raged among them—to such a degree that it Was called the poor^s plague. The question does not seem to have been cn- tertaincil, whether the same physical causes which acted upon the cattle might not have acted also on that part of the human species which was most exposed to elemental vicissitudes. Salvaresa supposes the ejiidemic fever of 1764, at Cadiz, was occasioned by the old and corrupted corn. Amongst the poor, he says, the disor- der was most violent. In this year the animals were first affected; and the mortality wasj princi- pally observed among birds that fed on grain, as pigeons, poultry, &c. (Dr. Maclean.') In the fever of Cadiz of the year 1800, Sir James Fellowes asserts that the air, from its stagnant state, became so vitiated, that its noxious qualities aiTected even animals; canary-birds died with blood issuing from their bills; and in all the neighbouring towns which were afterwards infect- ed, no sparrow ever appeared. (Dr. Good, vol. ii. p. 74.) Dr. Mead states that it has been observed m times of the plague that the country has been for- saken by the birdij. This curious fact does not belong only to the form of pestilential fever called plague: it is one of the many phenomena which are scarcely reconcileable w.th the notion that gives to the causes of pestilence so confined a range as the intercourse with an infected individual or the exposure to fomites. Livy tells us that in the pestilence at Rome, A. U. C. 571, not a vul- ture was to be seen for two years: and Thucy- dides relates that in the plague of Athens the birds that usually preyed on human flesh entirely disappeared. Diemerbroeck, the learned and can- did author of the work on the plague of Nimeguen in 1636, records that it often happened when canary-birds died without any obvious cause in any house, the plague showed itself not long after in some of the fiimily. He also states that birds were much more scarce than at other times: — avium multo rarior numerus. It is mentioned by Dr. Short that during the four months Dant- zic was aflSicted, in 1709, all kinds of birds, as swallows, crows, sparrows, &c. deserted the city. A rubigo or mildew, i. e. a dew impregnated with highly corrosive powers, (see Hird on Pesti- lence, p. 91,) was anciently deemed one of the causes of epidemic diseases. The Romans, ap- prised of the pernicious effects of these mildews, instituted what they denominated yeste rubigalia, and worshipped an imaginary God under the name of Robigo. Hoffmann mentions such a dew, 'ros valde corrosivus,' as having infested vegetables in 1693-4, whence the cattle died in multitudes. (Tom. i. de Temp. Ann. Insalub.) And Ramazzii:i ascribes an epidemic to similar dews; at -vrirch time the vegetables, corn, and fruit becam»« black, being affected with a ' lues rubigalis.' The same year was remarkable for the scarcity of honey; and most creatures that live upon what they extract from vegetables died or languished. Probably such occurrences led many of the ancient writers to mention the silence of the grasshopper, and the drooping inactivity of the bee and the silk-worm, among the presages of impend- ing pestilence. As to the spots, which are said to have assumed various forms, especially those of criiciculse or little crosses, and 1,0 have appeared suddenly on garments, utensils, &c. as they are recorded chiefly on the authority of monks, whose writings are highly tinged with super^jtition, they are scarcely worthy of serious consideration. (Rees' Cyclop, art. Epidemic.) Most of the writers who treat of the prognostics of pestilence refer to swarms of some of the insect tribes. Lord Bacon particularly remarks that those years have been noted for pestilential, wherein there were great numbers of frogs, flies, locusts, &c. The plagues of Dantzic, Nimeguen, and Marseilles, and many others, afford illustra- tions of this fact. To give details of all the natural signs W'ould not be compatible with our object. 2. To found a truth in science we must have recourse to general observations. Isolated facts are only valuable so far as they tend to establish general laws. There is no science in which what are called facts require to be viewed with more suspicion than in that of medicine; nor any de- partment of it where there is more room for erroi than in that which comprehends the invisiblo region of contagious miasms and atmospheric in. purities. We have the following general observa tion of Dr. Mead in relation to the matter hcSoiK- us: Fevers of extraordinary malignity are th>*](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21116817_0069.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
