Essays on the floating-matter of the air in relation to putrefaction and infection / by John Tyndall.

  • Tyndall, John, 1820-1893.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on the floating-matter of the air in relation to putrefaction and infection / by John Tyndall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    Burdon Sanderson, Koch, and others. The union of scientific minds is, or ought to be, organic. They are parts of the same body, in which every member, under penalty of atrophy and decay, must discharge its 'due share of the duty imposed upon the whole. Of this ‘ body,’ a short time since, England provided one of the healthiest limbs ; but round that limb legislation has lately thrown a ligature, which threatens to damage its circulation and to divert its energies into foreign channels. In observational medicine one fine piece of work may be here referred to—the masterly inquiry of Dr. Thorne Thorne into the outbreak of typhoid fever at Caterham and Kedhill. Hundreds were smitten by this epidemic, and many died. The qualities of mind illustrated in Dr. Thorne’s inquiry match those dis- played by William Buddin his memorable investigation of a similar outbreak in Devonshire. Dr. Budd’s process was centrifugal—tracing from a single case in the village of North Tawton, the ravages of the fever far and wide. Dr. Thorne’s process was centripetal— tracing the epidemic backwards from the multitude of cases first presented, to the single individual whose infected excreta, poured into the well at Caterham, were the cause of all. The Essays here presented to the reader belong to the A B C of the great subject touched upon in the foregoing Note. The two principal ones, namely, Essays II. and III., were prepared for the Royal Society, and are published in the ‘ Philosophical Trans- actions ’ for 1876 and 1877. But, though written for