Directions of the Privy Council in case of pestilence.

Date:
[1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Directions of the Privy Council in case of pestilence. 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.

    8/10 page 269
    are particularly condemned by all the physicians who have watched the pestilence among them. The greatest care should be taken to avoid cold or wet feet—for diarrhoea is the worst of the predis- ponents. As we are ignorant whether the pestilential matter enters the liealthy body through the pores of the skin, the lungs, or the ali- mentary canal, prudence rerpiires that we should act as if it may enter by all of them. In many parts of Europe the attendants on cholera patients, and those who come into contact with the dead, use garments pitched over, or made of oilskin; and in former times, when the plague was here, physicians were obliged to wear such dresses, both because their own lives were considered as of the highest value, and that they might be at once distinguished in the streets. A false shame, or falser courage, might prevent many from spontaneously adopting such precautions, who would be Iiappy to obey an official regulation enforcing them. The phy- sician should carry a phial of chloride with him wherever he goes. II is hands, after touching a patient, should be carefully washed with soap and water, and then sponged with the solution of chloride. The attendants on the plague wear a double handker- chief, steeped in vinegar, over the lower part of the face. The following pastile has been recommended : Dried chloride of lime, 12 grains, Sugar .... 1 ounce, Gum tragacanth , 20 grains. This, being flavoured with some essential oil, should be made into lozenges of 18 or 20 grains, and one of them held in the mouth during the visit. In conclusion, we must entreat the public not to be swayed by the nonsense daily poured out in the newspapers, by persons the least entitled to be heard on this subject. Your merchant, whose traffic is likely to be interrupted, converts himself for the nonce into Medicus, Senex, Detectorj 8cc. &c., and hazards asser- tions of the most unblushing audacity. In spite of the fearful ravages of this pest in all the islands of the Indian Ocean, w'e are told that England is safe—for cholera never crosses seas. Ano- ther assures us, that, at all events, a sea-voyage must prodigiously diminish its virulence ;—and yet it w'as after a voyage of three thou- sand miles—something more than the passage from Hamburg!— that it carried off, by thousands, the inhabitants of IMauritius. A third is ready with his assertion, that no medical man or at- tendant on the sick has died of the disorder; and this, in the face of the Madras Report, wliich records the death of thirteen medical men in that presidency, and the illness of twenty more—of the St. Petersburg Reports, which show that every tenth medical man
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3