Illustrations of the atmospherical origin of epidemic diseases, and of its relation to their predisponent constitutional causes. And on the twofold means of prevention, mitigation, and cure, and of the powerful influence of change of air as a prinicpal remedy / by T. Forster.

  • Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrations of the atmospherical origin of epidemic diseases, and of its relation to their predisponent constitutional causes. And on the twofold means of prevention, mitigation, and cure, and of the powerful influence of change of air as a prinicpal remedy / by T. Forster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    61/232 (page 49)
    utility in practice, and the important discoveries they may lead to, there is no apology left for pursuing an ignorant crafty and commercial policy in the practice of our calling, or omitting to make ourselves acquainted, as far as lies in our power, with the collateral branches of science. Who would have thought in the time of Hippocrates, that the severer symptoms of atmospherical intermittents might be successfully inter- rupted by the bark introduced in the seventeenth century by the Jesuits ? or that a pestilential animal poison like smal] pox could be prevented by the introduction of a counterbane secreted by the disordered vessels of a cow? My object is not to undervalue remedies, nor to check the labour of the pharmacologian ; but, by pointing out the great atmos- pherical source of disorders, to recommend the more general employment of change of air assen adjunct remedy. | ——>—— § 7.—Of the Disorders incident to certain Individuals in the several Seasons. . As there are some persons who are always illin autumn and others who are never well in spring, it has occurred to me to enquire whether their respective maladies might arise from some autumnal and vernal effects of atmosphere which existed every where in those seasons, or whether they belonged to particular countries. Tor the former case a remedy has been humourously proposed for the affluent in migration. Those who could not bear the autumn might cross the tropics southward, after Midsummer, to be ready for an antarctic spring ; while those to whom the vernal air was insalubrious might fly the septentrional regions after the winter solstice. The natural year of the one party would then consist of two springs and two solstices, that of the latter of two solstices | and two autumns. The one would migrate before the swallows and the other lead the van of the woodcocks. They might hail each other in passing at the equator, and enquire what particular epidemics might be raging in the countries whither they were bound, and might be directed thereby in their choice of a situation. H