Illustrations of the atmospherical origin of epidemic diseases : and of its relation to their predisponent constitutional causes, exemplified by historical notices and cases, and on the twofold means of prevention, mitigation, and cure, and of the powerful influence of change of air as a prinicpal remedy ... / by T. Forster.

Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrations of the atmospherical origin of epidemic diseases : and of its relation to their predisponent constitutional causes, exemplified by historical notices and cases, and on the twofold means of prevention, mitigation, and cure, and of the powerful influence of change of air as a prinicpal remedy ... / by T. Forster. 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.

    9/233
    PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Accidental cli'cumstances, which it is not now necessary to advert to, called my mind early in life to the remarkable eliects produced by Varieties of Atmosphere on human Health. I not only saw in the varied operation of the Air on the living' body the causes of otherwise unac- countable diseases ; but soon discovered the reasons why medicines had so very little effect, comj)ared with Changes of the Air and peculiar conditions of Weather, over a large class of complaints ; and why, when atmospherical excite- ment was happily withdrawn, the restorative nisus of Nature speedily effected a cure, regardless, as it would seem, in many cases, of the lesser and often .baneful influence of a ])lurality of opposite remedies, and the pretended panaceas of medical empyricism. About the same time I was struck with the simple but effective practice of Mr. Abernethy, the success of which, in subduing the most numerous and dissimilar forms of disease, by abstemiousness and regularity in dief, and the emplovment of a few easily accessible medicines of known power, seemed to point out some source of general disease in the disturbance of the digestive functions, which could hardly be referred to the state of the air, while a more obvious cause offered itself to notice, in the abuses of the appetites and passions, and in the dereliction of those salutary jteriodical fasts and abstinences which our ancestors practised with so much medicinal as well as moral effect, under the discipline of the church, and with the united sanction of all the great nations of antiquity. To reconcile an apj)arent inconsistency which seemed to be included in the belief in these two distinct sorts of morbific causes, was my next endeavour ; and I found an easy solution of the difliculty, in the fact, that in every case of disturbance in the animal machine, there was a predis- jjonent cause, which favoured, and, as it were, laid out for the operation of the exciting cause, in the production of actual disease. That the hereditary varieties of constitution, and the evil habits of artificial life, constituted the principal ])redisponent to disorder seemed obvious ; while a series of observations and enquiries, which it is the object of this essay to develope, showed that the exciting cause resulted from the occasional morbific qualities of the atmosphere. It necessarily resulted from these premises that, as the causes of disease were twofold, so must be the remedies ; and that while the simple practice of alleviating the irritation