Pneumonia : its supposed connection, pathological and etiological, with autumnal fevers, including an enquiry into the existence and morbid agency of malaria / by R. La Roche.

René La Roche

Date:: 1854

Credit: Pneumonia : its supposed connection, pathological and etiological, with autumnal fevers, including an enquiry into the existence and morbid agency of malaria / by R. La Roche. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

462/508 page 466

$enced by tliem; when they talk of smallpox existing in the same subject with scarlatina, hooping-cough, measles, miliary fever, psora, or syphilis; when they affirm that hooping-cough and measles, the vaccine poison and syphilis, scarlatina and measles, or scarlatina and hooping-cough occasionally combine together; when they cite cases in which typhus existed with erysipelas, scarlatina, vaccinia, psora, syphilis, or gonorrhoea; when they describe the plague as sometimes existing in combination with smallpox, vaccinia, syphilis, or cholera Asiaticus; or of dengue uniting with scarlatina—influenza with the latter disease or measles—or syphilis with herpes or psora; when, in addition, they inform us of three distinct diseases, as smallpox, measles, and hooping-cough; or measles, scarlatina, and chicken- pox, running their course simultaneously; when we are told that inoculation with a mixture of variolous and vaccine matters will produce, not, as Woodville stated, one or other of the two dis- eases, but both; when a case is cited on the authority of Leroux, in which the vaccine pustule was, as it were, imbedded in the variolous, and the matter of each, when used for inoculation, pro- duced its sjjecific disease; when, I say, they talk of such occurrences, we shall be justified in doubting the accuracy of their observations, and in maintaining that, instead of assemblages of distinct diseases, we have in all such instances really and substantially but one com- plaint, modified somewhat by peculiarities of season and weather, or other causes, but still to all intents and purposes the same.' All these complications—all this livery Avearing—all this amal- gamation of things distinct from each other, is now jDcrhaps too well known, and generally acknowledged, by those whose attention has been drawn to the subject, and who are, in consequence, best qualified to form an opinion upon it, to have required any length- ened remarks in this place, were it not that some writers among us and elsewhere, who are not backward in severely criticizing and cast- ing ridicule on the views of physicians of high authority, and who charitably undertake to set the whole professional world right on ' See, on these various combinations, Nott, N. 0. Journ. March, 1848, p. 58G; Dick- son, Trans, of Med. Assoc. v. 142, 143; Williams on Morbid Poisons, i. 40, 120, 211, 212, 264, 301, ii. 38, 05, 191, 296, 623; Holland, Connection of Diseases, 58, Am. ed. 64; Blair, 70; Heberden, 385; Foderd, M6d. Ldgale, v. 352-857; Lafont-Gouzi, ]\Iate- riauxpourservir al'Hist. de la M6decine JVIilitaire, &c. 47-83; Sarcone, Mai. do Naples, ii. 225; Anglada, Traite de la Contagion, i. 331, 332, 334, 330; Adams on Morbid Poisons, 11, 13; Bousquct, Traitd de la Vaccine, 300; Robertson, a General VicAv of the Nat. Hist, of the Atmosphere, ii. 370. '$