Asiatic cholera in Bristol in 1866 / by William Budd.

  • William Budd
Date:
[1867?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Asiatic cholera in Bristol in 1866 / by William Budd. 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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    ASIATIC CHOLERA IN BRISTOL IN 1866. •i c WILLIAM BUDD, M.D., HONORARY AND CONSULTING PHYSICIAN TO THE BRISTOL ROYAL INFIRMARY. [Reprinted from the British Medical Journal, April 13, 1867.] ilk course which events have taken in the year .iiich is about to close,* has furnished evidence as to e prevention of cholera of the most decisive kind id of the highest practical importance. iAJter having diffused itself widely over Europe, ’■9 pestilence has once more obtained a footing in igland, and has visited Bristol, among other cities, ■ the fourth time. Immediately on its arrival here, plan of disinfecting the choleraic discharges, inch I was the first to propose and employ, and whose efficacy the epidemics of 1849 and 1854 had veady given me many practical proofs, was put in Live force against it, and has been continued to 3 end. IThe success which has followed has been great he- ld expectation, even in the minds of those who pre most sanguine of the result. Many, in fact, oo were firm in the belief that cholera is pro- bated by these discharges, and that the true }j to prevent its spread is to disinfect them on uir issue from the body, had grave misgivings :to whether this knowledge could ever be turned to cessful account amid the confusion, the turmoil, 11 the thousand and one other impediments to be ountered in a great city. :’hese misgivings, the experience of more than one tinental city which, in the preceding year, had •;d disinfectants largely with no great mitigation :ffie scourge, seemed, indeed, fully to justify. This paper was written in the last months of 1866, I myself had, as indeed I have elsewhere shown,* a deep sense of the practical difficulties in the way of the plan; but long thought on the subject had led me to the settled conclusion that, with clear insight and a strong will, these difficulties might all be over- come. It always appeared to me, in fact, among a civilised people like ours, to be a question merely of money and of men; and that, if the right man could be got, and the money were forthcoming, the right thing could be done. A comparison of the numbers swept off by cholera and diarrhoea in Bristol (including Bedminster and Clifton, which, with Bristol, are practically but one town) in the four successive outbreaks of 1832, 1849, 1854, and 1866, will be the best introduction to what is to follow. These numbers are respectively : 1832, 626 ;f 1849, 1979; 1854, 430; 1866, 29. From these figuies, it will be seen that the deaths which, from something below a thousand in 1832, had risen to nearly 2000 in 1849, fell to 430 in 1854. This great drop, in exact accordance as it was with the corre- sponding abatement of the mortality from the pest in other cities, was at the time, and no doubt rightly. see Memoranda on Asiatic Cholera, its Mode of Spreading and t\PmuV6nti0? Wright and Co., Bristol, I860. amber of,ca8es officially reported to the Board of Health in 1882, were 1812; of deaths, 626. These numbers are whomwam Dr’ bym?nds- who WRS Secretary to tho Board, aud to hiwu? °)Te“ very'“tereeUng account of this epidemio, to be far fonnde?nnttIh«h« (IVT' PT- As’0C > voK “■> ^rom calculations in Rritln th i, *> eSB ubove the RmiUftl average which the mortality MinW^r.nro.aohed,*n yflRr, lie considers that the deaths from cholera fell, in reality, little short of one thousand.