The doctrine of evolution in its application to pathology / by William Aitken.

  • Aitken, William Henry, Sir, 1825-1892.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The doctrine of evolution in its application to pathology / by William Aitken. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    108/116 (page 100)
    the same agencies were in operation in old times just as now in furnishing the sources of disease* The causes of a high mortality are various; but the greater number of known causes may be referred to five heads •— 1, excessive cold or heat; 2, privation of food; 3, effluvial poisons generated in marshes, foul prisons, camps, cities [towns, villages]; and epidemic diseases, such as typhusi plague, small-pox, and other zymotic diseases; 4, mechanical and chemical injuries; 5, spontaneous disorders to which the structure of the human organisation renders it liable. These, in the order of their beginnings as above stated, may be regarded as representing the origm of primeval dis- eases in their order of commencement; and as in epidemics plagues were the first diseases distinguished, although the characteristic symptoms of the early pestilences escape the notice of even the classical historian; famine would naturally take the first place as a cause of disease.f which would be followed by dysentery, typhus, and fevers of sorts. The most powerful agencies which furnish the sources of disease in the present as in the past have been classified as— 1. Intensity of the struggle for existence—the more intense in proportion to the aggregation of the people. 2. The ever- recurring tendency towards concentration in hamlets, villages, towns, cities; and the tendency of the more rural population to migrate to those centres. 3. Increase of mortality in population and concentration. The more crowded a com- munity, the greater the amount of abject want, filth, crime, drunkenness, and other excesses—the keener the competition the more feverish and exhausting are the conditions of life. In such crowded communities, the more dangerous and unhealthy industries are carried on. These are the factors which mainly increase the dangers of aggregation. And while the heredi- tary nature of acquired properties must not be lost sight of, the diseases incidental to special occupations have also a special influence. It is with regard to the action of those several factors separately that information is constantly required to see how far and in what manner they respectively add to the mortality of towns. The influence of occupation on death-rates is a very marked and important one ; and still more important is the share in the death-rate that is due to each disease. | Particular classes of diseases reign in difierent regions and * Vital Statistics, 1885, Dr. William Farr, loc. cit., p. 139. t Lyell's Antiquity/ of Man, p. 409. I Dr. Ogle in Supplement to 45th Annual Report of the Registrar- General of Births, Marriages, and Deatlis in England, 1885.