The cholera not to be arrested by quarantine : a brief historical sketch of the great epidemic of 1817, and its invasions of Europe in 1831-2 & 1847 : with practical remarks on the treatment, preventive and curative, of the disease / by Gavin Milroy, M.D.

  • Gavin Milroy
Date:
1847
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cholera not to be arrested by quarantine : a brief historical sketch of the great epidemic of 1817, and its invasions of Europe in 1831-2 & 1847 : with practical remarks on the treatment, preventive and curative, of the disease / by Gavin Milroy, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    the latter part of 1836. Need a word be said, after these simple statements, as to the occasionally slow and gradual migratory course of the disease I A page or two back, I gave as a reason for selecting Influenza as an analogue, in the mode of its wide-spread diffusion, to Epi- demic Cholera, that there seems to be a sort of consecutive affinity or mutual connection between catarrhal and choleroid forms of disease. At all events, they have certainly, on very many occa- i sions, been observed to prevail about the same period of time, or j the one very soon after the other; as if the same constitution, or general condition, of the atmosphere were favourable to the deve- . lopment of both. Visitations of the Influenza have indeed been ) found to precede the invasion of other epidemic malignant diseases ] as well as that of Cholera; but of course I shall confine my re- marks at present exclusively to the latter. Without going further back than the age of Huxham, we find that he alludes to the un- usual prevalence of diarrhoea and severe vomitings and purgings in the summer and autumn of 1733, after the Influenza in the spring of that year. He has also described an epidemic dysen- tery, which prevailed both before and after the Influenza of 1743. The same was the case in 1762. In 1803, the Influenza was followed in this country by a low tj'phoid fever in some places, and in others by such severe gastric irritation, that Dr. Bertram, a most intelligent physician of Hull, was, led to make the very curious observation that some of the attacks of the Influenza nearly resembled cholera morbus, expressing at the same time his firm conviction of the two diseases being different types of the same disorder, and occasioned by the same cause. We need scarcely remind the reader that the Epidemic Cholera in 1831-2 was, in this as well as in several countries on the continent, pre- ceded and followed by visitations of the Influenza; and the year 1837 was rendered remarkable not only by another very severe invasion of the same malady, but also by a partial return of the oriental pestilence in several parts of Europe. Both Dr. Hancock and Dr. Hecker* have made an emphatic allusion to the striking concomitance of the two diseases. The former, writing in 1832, • The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. Translated from the German by Dr. Babington. London, 1844.
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