Report on cholera in Europe and India, / by Edward O. Shakespeare.

  • Edward O. Shakespeare
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on cholera in Europe and India, / by Edward O. Shakespeare. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    11/1082
    LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. Philadelphia November 17, 1890. The Hon. James G. Blaine, Secretary of State: . ' , Sir : In accordance with instructions I have the honor now to transmit ray official report on cholera in Europe and India in relation to the last great widesjjread epidemic. I was directed by his excellency the President, during the early part of the autumn of 1885, t<j pro- ceed to Europe and prosecute in the various countries which were then experiencing the ravages of the disease, or had recently suffered from them, siich investigations into the cause, preven- tion, and cure of Asiatic cholera as my judgment would suggest. Upon my arrival in Europe pursuant to this commission I found that cholera was rapidly vanishing from that continent, for the season at least, and I learned that the field for most active observation was then in Palermo, the principal city of the island of Sicily. After equipping myself with a traveling laboratory, purchased in Berlin, and familiarizing myself in that city with the characteristics of the so-called comma bacillus of Koch, through the courtesy of Dr. Robert Koch, xw'ofessor of hygiene at the University of Berlin, and Dr. Georg Gaffky, director of the Pathological Laboratory of the Imperial Board of Health at Berlin, whose kindness I take this public opportunity to gratefully acknowledge, I went at once to Palermo, where a severe epidemic of cholera was raging, and began my work of inves- tigation and experiment. I deem it fitting at this point also to express my high appreciation of the constant courtesy extended me by his excellency the Count of Bardessono, prefect of ' Palermo, who lost no opportunity to facilitate in every manner possible my researches every- where within the limits of his prefecture. I should also mention the ready assistance I received in the Kingdom of Italy at the hands of many officials and physicians, who kindly placed themselves and their knowledge at my service. After the ei^idemic was ended at Palermo I next turned towards Spain, gaining informa- tion relating to the ravages of the epidemic in the various cities of Italy traversed en route by rail from Naples .to Marseilles, from which latter port I sailed for Barcelona, reaching that northern Mediterranean port of Spain in the first days of January. 188G. When I arrived in Sj)ain cholera had virtually disappeared from the Kingdom; it still lin- gered, however, in the form of local epidemics in one or two of the southern provinces near the Straits of Gibraltar. Because of the great extent and severity of the Spanish epidemic of 1885, as well as on account of the very large number of so-called anti-choleraic inoculations ■ which had been practiced in that country by Dr. Jaime Ferran and his assistants as a measure of prevention, and had been pro]Dosed in the Spanish Cortes by Senor Castellar as a substitute for quarantines and cordons sanitaires as more effective and less hurtful to trade than the latter, I was of the opinion that the course of cholera in Spain presented to me the best opportunity of making as thorough a study of the disease as was in my power. I visited many towns, in nearly everj^ province of Spain where cholera had sjDread widely, endeavoi'ing to obtain by personal contact with the inhabitants of high and low station and intelligence a fundamental knowledge of the circumstances of life, manners and customs, and.
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