Medical notes and reflections / by Sir Henry Holland.

  • Sir Henry Holland, 1st Baronet
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical notes and reflections / by Sir Henry Holland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    628/664 (page 608)
    The general question is one largely open to research;—sanc- tioned in its object by our ignorance of other causes for these genera of disease; — affording some curious presumptions where certainty may be unattainable; — and involving a topic than which none is more remarkable, viz., the origin and progress of those disorders, which, if not newly generated, have first appeared in our parts of the world within the period of modern record; and in some cases become endemic, where there is no authentic trace left by history of their prior existence.* * While this sheet is passing through the press (August 1855), the Report of the Medical Council of the General Board of Health, on the Epidemic Cholera of 1853-4 in London, has been presented to Par- liament. Among other valuable averages and conclusions which it contains, may be mentioned those as to the proportion of mortality at different ages;—those as to the probabilities of recovery at different stages of the disease ;—and those which attest a diminished rate of mortality in some proportion to the elevation above the Thames. It will be found, I think, that these conclusions (admitting, as is pro- bable, their confirmation by future experience) are in nowise incom- patible with the views proposed in the foregoing Chapter.