Volume 2

Practical observations on malignant cholera, as that disease is now exhibiting itself in Scotland / [David Macbeth Moir].

  • David Macbeth Moir
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on malignant cholera, as that disease is now exhibiting itself in Scotland / [David Macbeth Moir]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that a certain number do not become infected at all; that others exhibit symptoms of the disease in six days, and others not till the fourteenth or fifteenth. This was the re¬ sult of the experience of one of the most extensive inocula- tors of the last century, Baron Dimsdale. When the small¬ pox is caught casually, by inhalation or some other means, the period which elapses between exposure to the malady and its appearance is found to be still longer, and to vary from eighteen to twenty-five days. Dr Patrick Russell, whose situation of physician to the British factory at Aleppo, gave him opportunities of collecting the valuable materials which he has embodied in an admirable treatise on the plague, says, p. 303, ‘ From what I observed at Aleppo, I was inclined to think the infection (viz. the plague) rarely lies latent beyond ten days, but wider experience is neces¬ sary to determine a matter of so much importance.’ From a consideration of these and similar facts, it is acknowledged that the constitution of a patient modifies the action of a poison, and that, in those examples in which we know the exact moment at which the person became infected, it is impossible to tell, except generally, when he will exhibit the characteristics]of the peculiar disease. If there is so much uncertainty when we possess one fixed point to start from, how much more complicated and uncertain does the inves¬ tigation become when we have no accurate data to guide us; when we neither know the constitutions of those sup¬ posed to have been exposed to a contagious malady, nor the precise time when they imbibed the poison ! The circumstances which hinder or delay the communi¬ cation of a contagious malady are very various, and often inappreciable; so that what appears to be sufficient expo¬ sure, turns out to be the reverse. A striking illustration of this is furnished by Dr Haygarth. Being desirous to ascer¬ tain the period at which smallpox appeared after the exposure of a patient to the action of its poison, he collected 37 cases