Epidemic and specific contagious diseases : considerations as to their nature and mode of origin / by H. Charlton Bastian, M.A.

  • Henry Charlton Bastian
Date:
[1871], [©1871]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epidemic and specific contagious diseases : considerations as to their nature and mode of origin / by H. Charlton Bastian, M.A. 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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    [From the l^'B.iTiSYi Medical Journal, Oct. ^th, 1871.] EPIDEMIC AND SPECIFIC CONTAGIOUS DISEASES: CONSIDERATIONS AS TO THEIR NATURE AND MODE OF ORIGIN. Being the Introductory Address delivered at University College, October 2,nd. By H. CHARLTON BASTIAN, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians ; Professor of Pathological Anatomy in University College, London ; Physician to University College Hospital; etc. We assemble to-day to inaugurate the work of a new session. Some of you are entering upon a new career, though others will have only to find their way again into what is, I trust, an already established routine of work and duty. The occasion, however, on which we now meet differs little in all essential respects from many others which have passed. Words of advice and counsel have been so often uttered to the new-comers, that I feel it would be comparatively useless again to take up such a well-worn theme. This view is further strengthened by the consideration . that the able and judicious exhortations of many who have preceded me on similar occasions are still accessible. Without further excuse, then, gentlemen, I shall pass on to topics of another kind. In medicine, even more than in other less complex sciences, it is well that imperfectly established general doctrines should be, from time to time, tested by the light of more recently acquired facts. Practice necessarily follows along the paths indicated by theory, and therefore it is in many cases all-important, even from a practical point of view, that true theories should be arrived at. The wider the applications of the theory, the greater is the necessity that it should be sound and based upon the best knowledge of the time. I have determined to lay before you some considerations touching the nature and origin of epidemic and so-called 'specific' infective dis- eases. You vidll be impressed with the vast importance of the subject when you learn that nearly one-fourth of the total number of deaths occurring in Great Britain are due to these affections. As the Registrar- General has aptly pointed out: '' Diseases of this class distinguish one country from another—one year from another ; they have formed epochs in chronology ; and, as Niebuhr has shown, have influenced not only the fall of cities, such as Athens and Florence, but of empires ; they decimate armies, disable fleets ; they take the lives of criminals that B