Quarantine and the plague: being a summary of the report on these subjects, recently addressed to the Royal Academy of Medicine in France / [by R.C. Prus]; with introductory observations, extracts from Parliamentary correspondence, and notes.

  • Gavin Milroy
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quarantine and the plague: being a summary of the report on these subjects, recently addressed to the Royal Academy of Medicine in France / [by R.C. Prus]; with introductory observations, extracts from Parliamentary correspondence, and notes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Now the plague exhibits each and all of these features in a striking manner. Its severity or malignancy is usually most intense on its out¬ break, and for the first few wreeks afterwards. Pugnet says that, towards the end of the epidemic at Cairo in the year 1800, almost every patient recovered notwithstanding the most opposite methods of treatment, where¬ as very few indeed recovered upon its first outbreak.* Not to accumulate authorities, we may state that Clot-Bey remarks that, “ when an epidemic commences, almost all who are attacked with it perish. During the first period, death occurs within 24 or 48 hours after the invasion; in the second, on the 4th or 5th day, or it may be not till the 14th or 20th. There are scarcely any fatal cases in the third period;” the pestilence having by this time lost its malignancy.f It must be obvious from this circumstance, how cautious medical men should be in estimating the value of any remedial means in the treatment of such a disease as the plague, and how important it is to pay great atten¬ tion to the period of the epidemic visitation when these means have been employed. This is a great practical truth, which is far too little attended to in the present day. “ At the commencement of the epidemic (1841),” says Dr. Penay, surgeon-major of a cavalry regiment in the Egyptian army, “ I lost almost every patient, in spite of my best exertions. Sub¬ sequently, several got well without my being able to determine what line of treatment seemed to be of decided benefit. During the decline of the epidemic, nearly all my patients recovered, and the greater number without any other remedy except local applications to the bubos and carbuncles.” The following extract from a report of M. Masserano, one of the members of the Egyptian council of health, is highly illustrative of the same subject. “ While the plague was at its height, almost all the persons who were attacked sunk at the end of four and twenty hours; and such was the violence of the epi- demy in some of these cases, that the patients died suddenly while engaged in their employments, as if they had been struck with lightning. The pestilential characters in the middle, and towards the end, of the epidemy were much less intense. The acute cerebral congestions and complete state of prostration were no longer observed; and petechise were of rare occurrence. The sick were dis¬ tressed with restlessness and weariness; exhaustion and headache threw them into a state of stupor. They experienced more or less severe glandular pains, shooting uneasiness in those parts where bubos were expected to appear : these bubos passed readily into suppuration. When the epidemy approached its close. * Memoire sur les Jievres de mauvais caractere du Levant et des Antilles. Paris, 1804. f The following observations of Sydenham may be aptly quoted here:— Observare insuper est quod, sicuti epidemicorum quilibet in subjecto particulari suas habet periodos (auymenti scilicet, status, et declinationis) ita etiam consti- tutio generalis quacunque, qua huic alterive morbo epidemice producendo favet, pro ratione temporis quo dominatur, suas etiam periodos habet, quatenus scilicet indies magis et magis epidemice grassatur, donee asguv attigerit suam, atque ex- inde iisdem fere gradibus decrescat, donee tandem penitus exoluerit, alteri consti- tutioni locum cedens. Symptom,atum enim quod attinet vehementiam, atrociora sunt omnia ubi primum se ostendit j qua quidem paulatim mitescunt, et in consti¬ tution^ catastrophe tarn sunt benigna atque eu(pogr]Ta quam patitur morbi natura in quo fundantur.—Observ. Med., sect. iv.