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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    last. If these be driven from his bed, his last stay is gone, for without their active co-operation the best prescription of the physician is only so much waste paper. What, let me ask, must have been the fate of the patient, and what the consequent panic, if the case of Cholera that occurred in London, a month ago at the Barracks of the Foot Guards, had been proclaimed, and treated as a contagion ? The poor fellow was promptly surrounded by his fearless comrades, who with their kind hands recalled and preserved the vital heat on the surface, by persevering in the affectionate duty of rubbing him for many hours ; but had the Medical Staff of the regiment been true contagionists,they must, as in duty bound, have commanded, and compelled every one of them to fly the in¬ fection. It depended upon them, to have spread around a far wilder and more dangerous contagion than that of Cholera Morbus, or any other disease,—the contagion of fear—and from what oc¬ curred at Cadiz, as above related, it is to be hoped our medical men will now see how much they will have it in their power, when Cholera comes, to pronounce, or to withhold sentence of desolation upon a community. The word Contagion will be the word of doom, for then the healthy will fly their homes, and the sick be deserted; but a countenance and bearing, devoid of that groundless fear, will at once command the aid, and inspire the hopes that are powerful to save in the most desperate diseases. It is stated, in a Scotch newspaper, that two poor travellers, passing from Kirkintulloch to Falkirk, ran the risque of being stoned to death by the populace of the latter place, and were saved from the immolation only by escaping into a house; and in an Irish one, that some shipwrecked sailors incurred a similar danger. Such barbarities must, in the nature of things, be prac¬ tised every where under a reign of terror, however humane or christianized the people may be—even the fatalism of the Turk would not be proof against it. In Spain they have been enacted in all their horrors (thanks to the quarantine laws) upon the un.