A treatise on the epidemic cholera : containing its history, symptoms, autopsy, etiology, causes, and treatment / by Alexander Turnbull Christie.

  • Christie, Alexander Turnbull
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the epidemic cholera : containing its history, symptoms, autopsy, etiology, causes, and treatment / by Alexander Turnbull Christie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    He need not re])eat what he said in the preface to his former work respecting the extensive advantages he enjoyed during a five years' residence in India for studying the disease in all its forms; for he hopes that the following pages will be found to contain sufficient evidence of them. At the same time, he wishes it to be distinctly understood that he has not confined himself exclusively to his own experience, but has sought for information in the many valuable works which have been already published by his medical bretkren in India, and he is inclined to believe that he has thus been enabled to arrive at more correct views respecting the nature of the disease than could possibly have resulted from the experience, however extensive, of one individual. Although it is the very same disease which broke out in the Gangetic Delta and other parts of Bengal in 1817? which continues in India to the present day, and has spread over the greatest part of the old world, yet there can be no doubt that it has presented a variety of features at different times and places. It is therefore evident that a partial acquaintance with it would be likely to convey very erroneous notions respecting its true general character; and it will probably be found that the inaccuracies of some authors have arisen entirely from their having limited their views too exclusively to the cases which came immediately under their own observation. But in expressing himself thus, he means no disparagement to the abilities and accuracy of any of his predecessors; and it is only his good fortune to have come a little later, and thus to have it in his power to benefit by their observations, and to take a more extensive view of the disease than it was for them to command. Were a being from a distant planet to visit our globe, and confine his obser- vations to one of the islands of the Pacific, he would certainly go away with very incorrect notions of the characters of our species; and the same would be the case were he only to pass a short time in any other single spot, and the farther he ex- tended his journey into difierent regions of our little world, the more and more would he become acquainted with the nature of its inhabitants, and the errors which he at first im- bibed would gradually be dissipated. So it is with every other inquiry: we have more correct notions of cholera now than prevailed upon its first appearance; and should it con- tinue longer in Europe, more extensive experience may remove the errors which still cling to us. In addition to his own experience, he is indebted for much valuable information on the symptoms, autopsy, and treatment of the disease to the Reports published by order of government, under the superintendence of the Medical Boards of Calcutta,