Memoir on the nature of miasm and contagion : read before the Cincinnati Medical Society, February, 3, 1836 / by John L. Riddell.

Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir on the nature of miasm and contagion : read before the Cincinnati Medical Society, February, 3, 1836 / by John L. Riddell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    with an abundant dew. The warm glass could not evidently condense dew. On adding a drop of distilled sulphuric acid to each glass, and evaporating to dryness with the heat of an alochol lamp, I always saw a trace of carbonaceous matter adhering to the glass in which the dew had been deposited? while the glass which had not condensed dew, was perfectly clean after the volatilization of the acid.” I may here add, that strong sulphuric acid decomposes and blackens organic matters, in consequence of its affinity for water; causing the oxygen and hydrogen of those substances to unite, in the pro- duction of water, and leaving the carbon in the condition of finely divided charaoal, which accounts for the occurrence of the black color. The same writer further says, that he soon experienced upon himself the effects of the miasm, whose presence he was endeavoring to prove: for he was attacked with a fever which forced him to interrupt his researches. To use his own language, “ the results obtained prove very clearly that, in marshy places, during the precipitation of dew, there is an organic matter deposited with it.” Since most of this memoir was in type, I have made some experiments with a view of detecting the aerial miasm of small pox. A perfectly clean ounce phial was half filled with distilled water; a small glass tube with a capillary ori- fice was made to terminate near the bottom, the upper and much larger portion of the tube bending horizontally to re- ceive the silver nozle of a delicate pair of bellows. Several turns of gauze were passed around the mouth of the phial embracing the tube, and the whole was securely fixed in an appropriate wooden frame-work. On the fifteenth of February the apparatus was carried to the city pest house, and under the superintendence of Dr. 0. M. Herron, it was placed on a table two or three feet from a small pox patient, just in that stage of the disease when the circumambient air is supposed to be most contagious. The bellows were blown by the nurses pretty constantly, for twelve hours, thus presenting a great amount of noxious air to the distilled water. The apparatus was left undisturbed
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