On diphtheria : its history, progress, symptoms, treatment, and prevention / by Ernest Hart.

  • Hart, Ernest, 1835-1898.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On diphtheria : its history, progress, symptoms, treatment, and prevention / by Ernest Hart. 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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    1 1 ^ vpnces, it is because it is impelled by influences that are not to be resisted, or is attracted by the conditions of the locality towards which it tends. If it explodes with violence in any one station, it is because it finds there abundantly the fuel which excites it to violence. And it must always be borne in mind that the predilections and the revulsions of disease are neither capricious nor capable of transformation. It is always attracted and it is always repelled by the same circumstances; nor can they undergo mutation or conversion. Failing, therefore, to find a satisfactory key to the etiology of diphtheria in the study of meteorological or cosmic condi- tions, we must look at the facts which these epidemics offer in relation to individual and hygienic circumstances which affect them directly or as predisposing causes. And it is mainly in the study of domestic conditions, indi- vidual constitution, and hygienic arrangements, that fruitful results are to be expected. Zymotic disease is mostly bred by poverty out of uncleanliness; and diphtheria follows a general law of what maj* be called the pythogenesis of zymotic poisons in this respect. It takes up its abode by preference in the hovels of the poor, where the stagnant and pent-up air reeks with animal effluvia—where human beings and domestic animals “pig” together; above all,—and this is the centre toward which all sanitary precautions should ever tend,—where the poisonous cesspool and the unflushed privy taint the air with subtle effluvia, that seize their victims by the throat, and bring death with their foul touch. The extreme tendency to limited action which marks tl\ese epidemics, and which was fully illustrated in the French epidemics, as it has been also iu the English, indicates the presence of domestic predisposing causes, amongst which we rank these obnoxious nuisances as of prime activity. But although poverty and dirt have been the ordinary con- currents, they have not been the exclusive conditions of de- velopment for diphtheria. Zymotic in its nature, it tends to fasten upon whomsoever is debilitated by previous disease, or