Observations on the connexion between famine and fever in Ireland, and elsewhere / by Henry Kennedy.

  • Kennedy, Henry, 1811?-1887.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the connexion between famine and fever in Ireland, and elsewhere / by Henry Kennedy. 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.

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    visit us, as it has often done elsewhere, and any one of the pre-dispo- sing causes be wanting. In a word, pre-disposing causes are such as are not necessarily present in every instance; and of this number is famine. If it happen to exist, it will pre-dispose to the disease, and it must add to an evil already existing; just as has happened when the season was very wet and inclement, or when the people were deprived of their usual supply of fuel. If this he not the proper view to take of the subject, I cannot understand why our people should he dying in such numbers of starvation. Why do they not die of fever? It will not be maintained that the paramount cause, famine, has not existed to a sufficient degree. Here we have numbers of wretched beings suffering from want in all its horrors; yet they die of starvation. Why then, I again repeat the question, does not fever ensue? At some period or other of their starving existence the want of food, according to the theory impugned, ought to have engendered the disease; yet they die of starvation. The truth is, that want of food, as I have endeavoured to prove all through this Essay, is not a necessary pre-requisite of fever, either in the individual or amongst a people; and that, considered as a single cause, it will not generate fever; a fact which every days’ experience is, at the present time, incontestibly proving. The remarks just made may probably he expressed in another way. Thus, if I were asked:—Does any one of the pre-disposing or exciting causes exert, or at least appear to exert, a greater influence than any other in the production of fever? Yes. We have a number of facts, which prove beyond any doubt, that if a number of individuals he kept crowded together in a small, ill- ventilated apartment, for a period of time, which is, however, very variable; that amongst such persons there is the strongest probabi- lity that fever will break out. Several examples have already been given of this; and I may here again refer to the valuable work of Dr. Harty. This gentleman has been physician to the goals of this city for many years ; and he states, that when the cells at any time happened to become over-crowded, fever invariably made its appear- ance amongst the inmates. That in point of fact the disease was engendered under his very eye; and that as surely as the proper means could be adopted to remedy this state of things, the disease was checked in its progress. I cannot conceive stronger evidence than this to show what little influence famine can have in the production of our fevers. For, let it be observed that this agent, in the circumstances alluded to, did not exist at all.* Besides over-crowding, there are two of the immediate causes of fever which frequently, though not always, play a prominent part in ? Hence the conclusion appears to be certain, that there exists a something, and in this country too, which exercises a much greater influence in the causation of our fevers, than famine; and consequently this agent is uot—cannot be—their paramount cause.
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