Asiatic cholera : its symptoms, pathology and treatment : with which is embodied its morbid anatomy, general and minute, translated from a paper by Drs. Reinhardt and Leubuscher / by Richard Barwell.

  • Barwell, Richard, 1827-1916.
Date:
MDCCCLIII [1853]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Asiatic cholera : its symptoms, pathology and treatment : with which is embodied its morbid anatomy, general and minute, translated from a paper by Drs. Reinhardt and Leubuscher / by Richard Barwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    riving in a ship from any port, in or near which, cholera was or had been prevalent, had been admitted with any complaint whatever, for some considerable time.’ The disease, there- fore, could not have been brought on board by the clothes of some non-infected individual, arriving from an infected ship.” Thus the conclusion is inevitable, that the poison, whatever it may be, is in the atmo- sphere, i. e. epidemic ;* or that it depends, as some suppose, upon an obscure change in the * A curious fact with regard to the absolutely non-contagious qualities of cholera deserves to be mentioned. The ward, in which the cholera patients were received, is at the bottom of a staircase, at the top of which is Abraham’s Ward, and there are two inter- vening wards; George, the lower, Isaac the upper, of these two. Now of all the wards in the hospital Abraham’s was that in which most patients were attacked with cholera or choleraic diarrhoea, while in Isaac’s were much fewer, and in George’s none. This created some surprise, and after inquiry it was thus explained. The mattresses in St. Thomas’s are stuffed with flock, and each is emptied, when a patient occupying it has died, and the room in which the material was kept was then next to Abraham’s Ward. Now it was found that the patients in Abraham’s, who were allowed to leave the ward, were in the habit of lying down upon this flock before it had been properly purified, only a few ascended a flight of stairs from Isaacs, and fewer still, probably none, from George’s. It was vain to remonstrate with the patients, and point out the folly of this proceeding; it was still continued. After a time, the room was kept locked, and then Abraham’s was as free from cholera as any other. This fact does not go far to prove that this disease may, under certain circumstances, be slightly contagious; but it should hardly be quite overlooked.