A treatise on the influenza of 1837, containing an analysis of one hundred cases, observed at Birmingham, between the 1st of January and the 15th of February / by Peyton Blakiston.

Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the influenza of 1837, containing an analysis of one hundred cases, observed at Birmingham, between the 1st of January and the 15th of February / by Peyton Blakiston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    INTRODUCTION. The following treatise is written with a view of furnish- ing a picture of the Epidemic of 1837, as it fell under the Author’s observation. It lays no claim to be considered as a history of the disease, as the practice of a single physician cannot furnish the materials necessary for such a work. For this reason no attempt has been made either to institute a comparison between this complaint and the epidemic of former years, or to detail the peculiarities of the season which preceded its appearance. Leaving it to others to digest this and similar reports from other places into a history of the disease, the author has confined himself to the simple task of recording/acls which he has endeavoured to observe accurately and to report faithfully; deducing such conclusions alone as appear incontestibly to result from their analysis. Thus, although the stamp of originality and talent be wanting, yet it is hoped that through these pages some bene- fit may accrue to medical science; which is found to progress surely and rapidly in proportion as its cultivators, laying aside ingenious speculations and fanciful theories, confine themselves to the observation and record of facts, and thus furnish the materials from which a sound and inductive philosophy may extract the truth. Surrounded by an immense population, and attached to a public Institution, from which the sick are visited (if necessary) at their own houses, the author was called upon to attend nearly two hundred persons labouring