A letter to the Presidents of the Westminster Medical Society, on cholera / [John Webster].

  • Webster, John
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Presidents of the Westminster Medical Society, on cholera / [John Webster]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    other countries; let medical authorities such as I have before mentioned, be likewise consulted, and examine whether the disease be really unknown in England. Suppose an individual has got his leg fractured, or labours under a violent attack of inflammation of the lungs ; it advances the knowledge of the physician or surgeon but little, and cannot contribute to the cure of the disease, neither can it allay the anxiety of the patient, nor the fears of his friends, to be told, that the affection of his lungs, or the broken limb, have identically the same symptoms as the cases seen in India, or in Russia. The point of most utility to learn is, whether the inflammation be of a new character or not; as on this, in a great measure, must depend the opinion to be given, and the treatment to be pursued. It would be presumption in me to allude to the oppor¬ tunities I may have possessed of seeing disease; but after carefully comparing the history and symptoms of those which I have visited or were described by others; there appears to my mind, no convincing argument, that the complaint now prevailing is altogether an unknown one in this country; and in this opinion, some of those prac¬ titioners most conversant with the epidemics of London coincide. The disease, from all yet known of it, would appear to be either a most aggravated form of pestilent or typhus fever, in which the cold stage is so overpowering, as even to kill the individual at the very first attack; or it may be called the English Cholera, whose cold stage is much more sudden and fatal, than is in most years, or in modern times, observed. The question has been repeatedly asked, and apparently, with some degree of triumph, of those maintaining the doctrine, that the disease now prevalent, is only an aggra¬ vated, and more fatal form of the complaint well known under the name of the English Cholera: if in any other epi¬ demic, with which medical men are familiar in this country, it ever happens that a patient will in some years fall a sacrifice, at the first onset of the disease, whilst in other seasons, the type of the same complaint assumes a more mild form, and seldom or ever proves fatal? In answer to this question, usually considered, by the bye, as a leading one, and upon which much of the argument is thought to
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