Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the theory and practice of physic (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![CAUSES OF DYSENTERY. it first showed itself; but he makes the qualifying addition, together with some unknown peculiarity of the atmosphere. Noxious exha- lations from accumulated filth in the narrow streets, and the effluvia from the banks of the Shannon, may also, he thinks, have contributed to produce the disease. As regards personal habits, he attributes much to the liberal use of pernicious spirituous liquors; for those ad- dicted to irregularities were observed to be the principal sufferers, though in several instances this could not be imputed. Dr. Cornuel says that, in the foremost place of individual causes, we must place drunkenness and an intemperate indulgence in spirits. Indeed, at Basse Terre (Gaudaloupe) there is no constitution so strong that it can escape dysentery without the practice of temperance. Every regiment arriving at Basse Terre loses, in the first year, three-fourths of those addicted to drinking, and the remaining fourth dies at no dis- tant period afterwards. (Memoir e sur la Dysenierie, fyc.) Mere morbid impression on the skin, by which its functions are impeded, will bring on the disease; as, in the instance of the French soldiers, who, at the battle of Dettingen, were exposed during a whole night to heavy rains, and were, in consequence, seized with dysentery. Another body of troops, encamped at a little distance, who were not thus exposed, escaped the disease. Sir John Pringle relates, that the English troops suffered at the same time from the like cause. Although dysentery has prevailed in every season yet it has been met with much more frequently in the summer than in the winter half of the year. Dr. Ozanam has collected the history of fifty epi- demic dysenteries which occurred in Europe, from which we learn that, of this number, thirty-six occurred in summer, twelve in autumn, one in winter, and one in spring. Mr. Annesley relates, that there were 13,900 persons attacked with dysentery in Bengal from 1820 to 1825; and that of this number two thousand lour hundred were attacked in the cold season, four thousand five hundred in the hot and dry season, and seven thousand in the hot and moist season. In the United .States army it has been observed, that the ratio of the disease in the third quarter of the year is more than threefold that in the first, and more than twice as high as that in the fourth quarter. (Dr. Forry — The Climate of the United Stales, p. 298.) The attempt to trace a community of malarious origin of dysentery with intermittent fever, has not been successful: — they are rife often at different seasons, and under different circumstances of locality. In our own country, both sporadic and epidemic dysentery are most fre- quent during the intense heats of summer and in situations in which intermittent fever is either not seen, or is comparatively rare. That there is sometimes alternation of the two diseases in the same person, is no more than is noted in the case of remittent fever and dysentery, and of typhous fever and this disease. In early autumn, says Dr. <-heyne, several cases of cholera [morbus] degenerated into dysentery, and in the spring following symptoms of dysentery accompanied the measles. Very often, he tells us, dysentery arose during convalescence from fever, in which case he several times ascertained that the pre- ceding fever was not attended with any unusual gastric or enteric irritation. In other cases he suggests, that, when the symptoms of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21156955_0229.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
