The quarantine laws, their abuses and inconsistencies : a letter addressed to the Rt. Hon. Sir John Cam Hobhouse, bart. M.P. ... / by Arthur T. Holroyd.

Date:
1839
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The quarantine laws, their abuses and inconsistencies : a letter addressed to the Rt. Hon. Sir John Cam Hobhouse, bart. M.P. ... / by Arthur T. Holroyd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    to him : “ Have you ever seen the disease propagated by contagion?” His answer is, “No: I never saw it, but I believe it is capable of being propagated by contagion.”* Now Dr. Pruner has stated that “ he saw one hundred and forty cases of plague,”f and yet in this large number he was not (though impressed with the belief of contagion) able to detect a single case of a patient having received the disease in this manner. Dr. Laidlaw says, “ that if the plague is pro- pagable by contagion, (and this I by no means deny in toto,) yet, it has been greatly exaggerated, and that so far from its following as a general rule, that persons exposed to the contact of the infected are always or generally attacked, it ought rather to be considered as the exception.”;}: In all this Dr. Pruner seems to agree with Dr. Laidlaw. Dr. Pruner believes that communication by actual contact “ does not always” produce the disease: “ very seldom,” he says, “ if the contact is slight and if there is no epidemical dispo- sition for the plague.”§ Finally, Dr. Pruner has “ very frequently” seen cases of plague “ which could not be traced to communication with infected persons.”|| Tn addition to these facts I may mention that Clot Bey, who has seen more of the plague probably than any medical man living, is de- cidedly opposed to and ridicules the doctrine of contagion. The only physician of any reputation in the East who at pre- sent advocates this doctrine is Dr. Bulard, but as the opinions of this gentleman appear to have been formed in a very equivocal manner, I shall merely call your attention to what has been said of him by Dr. Bowring,^} and to an article published on the 10th of November l 838, in the Journal des Debats,** leaving you to judge whether lie be truly and conscientiously a supporter of the notion that plague is capable of being propagated by contagion. Fhe most important point, as I have already observed, * Vide Quest, and Ans. 74. f ]b. 69. X Dr. Rowring on the Oriental Plague, p. 40. § Vide Quest, and Ans. 76. || lb. 77. TJ Dr. Bowring on the Oriental Plague, p. 25. ** From this number of that Journal I select the following extract: “ En effet, depuis six ans, j ai eu le bonheur de traverser les £poques pestilentielles “ les plus meurtrikres, de soigner 25 k 30,000 pestiferes et d’explorer 400 eadavres, C