Some considerations on the nature and pathology of typhus and typhoid fever : applied to the solution of the question of the identity or non-identity of the two diseases / by Alexander P. Stewart.
- Stewart, Alexander Patrick, 1813-1883.
- Date:
- [1840]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Some considerations on the nature and pathology of typhus and typhoid fever : applied to the solution of the question of the identity or non-identity of the two diseases / by Alexander P. Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![How, indeed, is it possible, except on this supposition, to explain the appearance of typhus in a country, and in the midst of annies, perfectly healthy, till the dcvelopcment of the conditions in ques- tion, but which, under their influence, were desolated by a pesti- lence, whose ravages, more frightful than those of war, consigned many, whom the sword had spared, to an ever-yawning and never- satisfied grave ? We cannot, in order to account for this, admit the idea, that, by some strange and inexplicable principle of election, infectious miasmata direct their course from distant shores to the seat of war, especially when we see in their invariable antecedence and sequence, the relation of cause and effect so clearly made out between the conditions referred to, and the appearance of the dis- ease. What reasonable cause cair be assigned for the murderous epidemic that arose, in the spring of 1810, onboard the Plymouth prison-ships, and cannot be refeiTcd to contagion or infection, as the disease first declared itself among the prisoners confined in what have been well termed these floating tombs, if not the very natural one of the long continued confinement of hundreds of persons, in a situation uniting all the conditions most adverse to health ? These considerations are borne out by the undisputed fact, that the type of fever becomes much more malignant in hos- pitalscrowded to excess, and by Gauthier de Claubry's curious state- ments at p. 148 of his work, where, speaking of the treatment of typhus, he mentions that, during the wars of the empire,' pa- tients previously despaired of, notwithstanding the assiduous use of therapeutic agents, were quickly restored to health, on the eva- cuation of the hospitals, with fresh air, barley-water and lemonade. How completely does this agree with the OKporimcntc of Pringle, as quoted above. Let me further refer to a ])aper by Dr Peebles, in the fourty-fourth volume, (No. 125) of the Edin.Med.and Surg. Journal, as detailing the results of his own experience in Italy, and giving a remarkably clear, succinct, and comprehensive digest of the mass of evidence bearing on this interesting subject. DrAli- son''s statements in his recent p^JK^iiT^let on the Scottish Poor Laws fully confirm the general opinion. I have only to add, in again partly anticipating details, to which I shall presently advert, that 22 of yO patients who positively declared to me that they had not in any way been exposed to infection, replied as follows to my in- quiries respecting the number who lived together. In three cases there were 4; in seven 5 ; in two 6; in three, 7; in two8; in one 9 ; in one 10 ; in one 12 ; in one 13. Many of those, who traced their aflfection clearly to contagion, stated the number of those who lived together as 12 and 13, and in one or two instances, as 16 at least. This, be it recollected, in one, or at most two small rooms, in the most miserable, darkest, and worst aired purlieus of a large manufacturing city. After the facts I have adduced, I think we may safely conclude, that animal effluvia, to use the term of Dr](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21469970_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
