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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![In the United States, the great weight of medical evidence and opinion is adverse to a belief in the contagion of cholera. The almost general immunity from attack of medical and other attend- ants on the sick, and the peculiarities of the circumstances of the appearance and diffusion of the disease, and, indeed, neatly all the facts already mentioned, have been repeated in this country, show- ing that the disease was not communicated nor communicable from person to person. The shortness of the duration of epidemic cholera in a place, the suddenness and rapid diffusion of the disease beyond what could occur from personal intercourse, and its entire disappearance, are facts adverse to a belief that it is contagious. To the same purport is the disorder of the digestive organs among the inhabitants, pre- ceding its regular attack, and anterior, also, to any imputed impor- tation or intercourse of any kind with the sick in other parts. Although cholera in the period of its attacks as well as in their intensity, has been not a little modified by the seasons and atmo- spherical vicissitudes, yet there are facts enough to show that it has appeared in all seasons and states of weather; unless we were to assert that in cities, where alone it has made its attacks in winter, there is a combination of circumstances ever present, which keep up a state of air in many of their close and illy-ventilated courts and houses analogous to that of an unhealthy autumnal season. It has been said of the great plague in the reign of Justinian : Such was the universal corruption of the air, that the pestilence which burst forth in the fifteenth year of the reign of this emperor was not checked or alleviated by any difference in the seasons. On the ground of the difficulty of explaining the cause of cholera, from any particular con- dition or combination of states of the atmosphere, a telluric origin has been supposed, and by some believed, to be the true one; for if we suppose it [the poison of cholera] to be generated below the crust of the earth, and consequently beyond the influence of the at- mosphere, it is easy to understand why its course is entirely inde- pendent of the seasons. (Williams.) By some, again, it has been alleged that the poison, if not the electrical or magnetic fluids them- selves, must be extricated by their agency. LECTURE XLI. DR. BKLL. Symptoms of Epidemic Cholera—To be described under the head of diarrhaal stage, or cholerine ; confirmed cholera, collapse and reaction—Importance of atten- tion to the first, or diarrhceal stage—Time of attack of.—Confirmed cholera— Disorder of the stomach and bowels ; of thecirculation ; of animal heat—Vomiting and purging vary in extent—Collapse without evacuations—Mind undisturbed —Symptoms of disordered innervation—Spasms and cramps—Symptoms of collapse, or blue stage—Sinking of the circulation the most constant and alarm- ing symptom of cholera—Thirst, and sense of heat in the stomach—Respiration, how affected—Symptoms connected with the blood and circulation—Sameness of cholera in all parts of the world—Stage of reaction, or consecutive fever— Urea in the blood, an alleged cause of the consecutive fever—Analogy between cholera and pernicious or malignant intermittents—Torti cited—The lecturer's case of comatose intermittent. Sfmptoms. — I shall speak of these under the shape of the several](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21156955_0390.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
