Consumption, as engendered by rebreathed air and consequent arrest of the unconsumed carbonaceous waste : its prevention and possible cure / Henry MacCormac.

  • M'Cormac, Henry, 1800-1886.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consumption, as engendered by rebreathed air and consequent arrest of the unconsumed carbonaceous waste : its prevention and possible cure / Henry MacCormac. 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.

    58/268 (page 36)
    bed, at the time, all ill of spotted typhus. The smell was like that of mice only much worse. Such an environment, such an atmosphere. I visited another dwelling, now happily no more, where actually nine persons, all of one family, too, laboured under maculated typhus. When I pass the dismantled ruin, that scene of desolation, with those nine sufferers, their fevered hands and burning countenances, seems to rise before me. In some, alas many European capitals, the amount of tuber- cular disease is very great. In Berlin it rose to fiffcysix, and in Munich actually to seventyfive per cent of the children examined.* Eetzius has testified to its frequency in Stock- holm. In beautiful Greece scrofula is only too common. Boudet, in a recent French journal, positively asserts that five Parisians out of seven are tubercle stricken. While Leclerc states that one soldier out of every three in French military hospitals is tuberculous. How indeed can it well be otherwise in a country where people sleep in alcoved beds with perhaps drawn curtains, and, almost certainly, with closed doors and windows. Consider for a moment the economy of a poor mans house- hold, his sordid surroundings, his perhaps intemperate habits, his wife himself and his eight children all occupying a couple of sorry ill ventilated rooms.f Wretched house accommoda- tion, evil habits, and closed windows by night, in truth, doom multitudes everywhere to destruction ere their time. A bad like a good habit becomes second nature, and like the fabled shirt of Nessus ruins the unhappy wearer. Many times win- dows are not made to pull down, and even when made to pull down, still they are not pulled down. In rural districts else naturally healthy, we find from Headlam Greenhows researches, that the mortality from phthisis, by reason I assert of the infamous deficiency in house ventilation, is often greater than in otherwise the most unhealthy town districts. Speaking of certain workshops, he observes. J Gas is consumed in quan- tities, the space is very inadequate and rendered still more so * Phillips, On Scrofula, p. 180. fFrazer, Magazine, Vol. 1., p. 287. X Childrens Employment Commission, 3d. Report, London 18G4, p. 14.