Letters upon cholera morbus, with observations upon contagion, quarantine, and disinfecting fumigations / [Sir William Fergusson].

  • Fergusson, William, Sir, 1808-1877
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters upon cholera morbus, with observations upon contagion, quarantine, and disinfecting fumigations / [Sir William Fergusson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    must be self-evident, but to say that it has followed it in the man¬ ner that a contagious disease ought to have done, in our own country for instance, is at variance with the fact. From Sunderland and Newcastle to the south, the ways were open, the stream of popu¬ lation dense and continuous, the conveyances innumerable, the communications uninterrupted and constant. Towards the thinly- peopled north how different the aspect,—townships rare, the country often high, cold, and dreary, in many parts of the line without inhabitants or the dwellings of man for many miles together, yet does the disease suddenly alight at Haddington, a hundred miles off, without having touched the towns of Berwick, Dunbar, or any of the intermediate places. It is said to have been carried there by vagrant paupers from Sunderland. Can this be true ? Could any such with the disease upon them in any shape, have encountered such a winter journey without leaving traces of it in their course ?* or, if they carried it in their clothing, the winds of the hills must have disinfected these fomites long before their arrival. No contagionist, however unscrupulous and enthusiastic, nor quarantine authority however vigilant, can pre¬ tend to say how the disease has been introduced at the different points of Sunderland, Haddington, and Kirkintulloch,—no more than he can tell why it has appeared at Doncaster, Portsmouth, and an infinity of other places without spreading. Even now, it lingers at the gates of the great open cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, as if like a malarious disease, (which I by no means say that it is) it better found its food in the hamlet and the tent, in fact, amongst the inhabitants of ground tenements, than in paved towns and stone buildings. We must go farther and acknow¬ ledge, that for many months past our atmosphere has been tainted with the miasm or poison of Cholera Morbus, as manifested by unusual cases of the disease almost everywhere, and that these harbingers of the pestilence only wanted such an ally as the drunken jubilee at Gateshead, or atmospherical conditions and * The Cholera in this country would appear always to travel with the pedestrian, and to eschew the stage coach even as an outside passenger.