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

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the most pitiable circumstances of bodily distress, to proscribe them as objects of terror and danger, instead of being as they actually are, helpless innocuous fellow creatures, calling loudly for our promptest succour and commiseration in their utmost need. They would go further to array man against his fellow man in all the cruel selfishness of panic terror, sever the dearest domestic ties, paralize commerce, suspend manufactures, and destroy the subsistance of thousands, and all for the gratification of a prejudice which has been proved to be utterly baseless in every country of Europe from Archangel to Hamburgh and Sunderland. Happily for our country, these measures are now as absurd and imprac- ticable as they would be tyrannical and unjust. They could not be borne even under the despotic military sway of Prussia and Russia, and in this free country it would be impossible to enforce them for a single week. The very attempt would at once, through- out the whole land, produce confusion and misery incalculable. I say, on the contrary, throw open their dwellings to the free air of heaven, the best cordial and diluent of foul atmosphere in every disease—^let their fellow townsmen hasten to carry them food, fuel, cordials, cloathing, and bedding, speak to them the words of consolation, and should they have fear to approach the sick, I take it upon me to say, they will be accompanied by any and every medical practitioner of the place, who, in their presence, will minister to the afflicted, inspire their breath, and perform every other professional office of humanity, without the smallest fear or risk of infection ; for they read the daily records of their profession, where it has been proved to them, that in the open but crowded hospitals of Warsaw, under the most embarrassing circumstances of warfare and disease, out of a hujidred medical men, with their assistants and attendants, frequenting the sick wards of Cholera, not one took the disease; that, for the sake of proving its nature, they even went so far as to clothe them- selves with the vestments of the dying, to sleep in the beds of the recently dead, and to innoculate themselves in every way with the blood and fluids of the worst cases, without, in a single