Letter to Sir Henry Halford, bart. M.D., President of the Board of Health, &c. &c. &c. on the tendency of the proposed regulations for cholera : with observations as to the nature of the disease, and the course to be followed immediately on its appearance in a family / by George Hamilton Bell.

  • Bell, George Hamilton, -1862.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to Sir Henry Halford, bart. M.D., President of the Board of Health, &c. &c. &c. on the tendency of the proposed regulations for cholera : with observations as to the nature of the disease, and the course to be followed immediately on its appearance in a family / by George Hamilton Bell. 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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    / in Europe, with all the advantages of superior me- dical skill, the deaths, if newspaper reports are to be credited, have been nearly in the proportion of one to two; and my persuasion is, that this extra- ordinary mortality is to be attributed, in no incon- siderable degree, to rigorous sanitary regulations; which, while they have in no respect arrested the progressof the disease, have increased its evils, both by their direct operation and by the causeless and enervating panic which they have been so-power- ful a means of promoting. Let it not be supposed, however, that I am rash enough to advocate the abandonment of all pre- cautionary measures. While it is barely possible that quarantine regulations may protect us, every one must wish to see them enforced as they have heretofore been. I greatly fear that they will prove unavailing; but so long as we are free of the dis- ease, no rational person would desire any relaxa- tion in what may be called the external means for preventing its arrival. If, however, in spite of all those means, Cholera should make its appearance in this country ; and, above all, if it break out, as it probably will do, under circumstances likely to satisfy the most zealous contagionist that it has not been conveyed in that manner; it will well become those to whom the matter has been confided by Go- vernment, to pause, before they subject the country to an irksome and impracticable system of plague- regulations, likely to prove a more serious misfor- tune than the disease itself. I am much deceived if one week’s experience of Cholera do not satisfy the medical men in Eng- land, that contagion is not the real evil with which they have to contend. But however that may be, I had been led to expect from the Board of Health some practical and popular directions for our guid- ance, in case the disease should unhappily make its appearance ; and I need not say that I had directed