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
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

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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    ON THE COMMON NATURE OP EPIDEMICS. I.ADIKS AND GeNTLKMKX, I am this eveniii to give you some account of Epidemic Diseases. I am to endeavour to explain their nature, and I am to consider them with a special reference to Climate and Civilization. The exposition of such a subject to such an audience is a character of the present time, and an honourable one. It includes topics which it has been the custom to consider purely ])rofcssional. It would seem at first view but little fitted for popular illustration. But it is one privilege of our day that the great treasury of know'ledge gradually opens wider and wider. Some of the most precious stores accumulated there, long thought to be the exclusive property of a privileged few, it is now admitted belong equally to the many. Among these are the results which modern science has developed relative to the class of subjects which is about to engage our attention. There is now a conviction that some account of the structure and functions of the human frame, of the action of physical agents on this wonderful machinery, and of the principles which relate to Individual, as well as to Public Health, ought to form a part of elemental education. There is, too, a grow- ing conviction that the necessity for such knowledge is not B