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.

  • Milroy, Gavin, 1805-1886.
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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    • I saw many persons attacked with bubos, without discontinuing their occupa¬ tions. Two of my servants, among others, were attacked with the disease in a mild form; they pursued their employment without saying any thing to me. At the time when the disease was most intense, we remarked that, out of 22 persons attacked, 10 died; whereas, towards the end, out of 60 seizures only two proved fatal.” What has now been said will abundantly show how truly the plague exhibits the first of the characteristic qualities of Epidemic Diseases. We proceed to examine the second one which we enumerated; viz. how far are other diseases, that may exist during the prevalence of the pestilence, influenced and modified by it. Diemerbrock, writing of the plague at Nimeguen in 1635-6, uses these words; vix ullus morbus peste incomitatus fuit. Pugnet says that “ the plague stamps with its own peculiar character all other co-existing diseases.” A proof and, at the same time, an effect of this decided influence of the pestilential constitution upon intercurrent diseases is the circumstance that these resume their own proper physiog¬ nomy (a remark made three hundred years ago by Prosper Alpinus*), as soon as the pestilence subsides. It would be easy to multiply authorities upon this subject, if it were necessary.f All medical men, who have had -an opportunity of studying the plague in Egypt or elsewhere, have remarked that, during the prevalence of an epidemic, those persons, who have already had an attack of the disease, usually feel pain or uneasiness in the scars of their old bubos and carbuncles, without their general health being much affected; and moreover that all those, who have escaped the disease and remain tolerably well, have still nevertheless experienced a certain feeling of malaise;—and even a slight degree of tenderness of the lymphatic glands in the groins and axillae. This is the case equally with those who are in strict quarantine, or who enjoy free pratique. Dr. Delong, in his account of the Epidemic at Cairo in 1841, observes that, it may be fairly said that the entire population had the plague in its first and mildest degree. So impressionable and sensitive, are those, who have once had the plague, to a pestiferous condition of the atmosphere that, it has been supposed,- they can generally predict the ap¬ proach of the disease by the shooting pains and uneasiness in their old bubonic and carbuncular cicatrices. It is possible that in this way we may find out if a pestilential constitution (of atmosphere) exists, or is impending. Does the plague exhibit the fourth character assigned to epidemic mala¬ dies ? viz. that of having in general nearly the same duration in different countries, and of appearing and disappearing at epochs which may be de¬ termined beforehand ? M. Levison, the Russian Vice-Consul at Alexandria, has drawn up the following statement from the data supplied to him by the Cheik Ibrahim-Bassi: * Medicina jEgyptorum. Lib. 1, cap. 16. f Sydenham has remarked, in his description of the plague of London, that the ordinary endemic fevers of a country are apt to retain, for a season or two after a severe attack of the pestilence, some of its peculiar and characteristic features or symptoms; pestilenti aeris diathesi etiamnum ex parte per sever ante, nec dam in aliam salubriorem penitus mmatatd.