Epidemics considered with relation to their common nature, and to climate and civilization : in two lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, November 1855 / by Southwood Smith.

Thomas Southwood Smith

Date:: 1856

Credit: Epidemics considered with relation to their common nature, and to climate and civilization : in two lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, November 1855 / by Southwood Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$-- TIIIVORIES OF EPIDEMICS. population under certain known conditions; that it is prac- j ticable to prevent the outbreak of epidemics altogether by | placing the population under certain other conditions; that ] the prevalence of the predisposing causes in particular lo- ^ calities, in certain intensities, is sufficient to produce local ij epidemic outbreaks ; that the prevalence of such causes in such j intensities, joined to some general conditions of the atmo- I sphere, such as the meteorological conditions which have been J enumerated, particularly those which favour the accumulation v and concentration of the products of organic decomposition, 1 are all that is required to engender wide-spread epidemics. | Those who adopt this view contend that the existence of a j y)rimary cause as a distinct and separate entity is not necessary ^ to account for the phenomena. ij The more common opinion however is, that joined to the j predisposing causes there miist always be present a primary j cause, having a distinct existence, capable of travelling from jj one part of the globe to another; capable of spreading over i any space however extended, or of confining itself to any ' space however small—a district, a street, a house, a room. It is urged that though we are unacquainted with the physical form or chemical properties of this body, this is no reason why we should not understand its force as a special agent in the production of disease, just as we know the forces * of other physical bodies, though not their nature. j The existence of such a body being assumed, it is conceived i that it exists not in a gaseous but in a liquid state. It is ^ supposed that it cannot exist in a gaseous state because a gas \ is readily diffused and dissipated ; because when organic matter is reduced to a gaseous state, it has passed from the organic into the inorganic kingdom, and there is no evidence that the elementary bodies belonging to this kingdom are capable of producing any form of fever; and because there is indubitable evidence that organic matter in a recent state of putrescence —the more recent the more potent—is capable of producing the most deadly forms of fever. From these considerations it is conjectured that the primary cause, whatever it be, is some$