Cholera; its treatment at the present crisis, or statistics touching the results of the treatment of Asiatic cholera by the three great branches of the medical profession, the homœopathic, the hydropathic, and the allopathic. In a letter, written at the request of the Health Committee of the Borough of Sheffield / by S. Eadon.

  • Eadon, Samuel.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cholera; its treatment at the present crisis, or statistics touching the results of the treatment of Asiatic cholera by the three great branches of the medical profession, the homœopathic, the hydropathic, and the allopathic. In a letter, written at the request of the Health Committee of the Borough of Sheffield / by S. Eadon. 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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    It is right that science should try to find out the cause of this malignant pestilence; but the time for such investigations is, when the nations are free from its withering effects. We have little faith, however, in bottling up portions of air in search of some mystic “ azone,” even with those, whose senses are sharp- ened and inured to the abracadabra of the alembic and the cru- cible ; or, to the microscopic examination of the fungous growths of infinitesimal animalculee with funny little tails; or, in the so- called wonders of chemical dust on the one hand, or of germ- cells on the other. The Cause of Cholera is hidden from us. Our conjectures may be right or wrong. The effects, however, we do know. To a stone falling to the ground, and to the revo- lution of a planet around its primary, we have given to the un- known cause of these effects the name of Gravitation ; but what that is which produces these results, will, in all probability, never be known. But this ignorance of Causation has not inter- fered with our investigations into stellar, planetary, and even cometary laws. The knowledge deduced is as certain and irre- fragable, as if the cause had been known by Intuition. And so it is, we apprehend, with Cholera. We have given a name to an unknown cause; but the effects produced should concern us most, or rather those who call themselves ‘the medical world.” There is not only a want of knowledge, but an academical deficiency in the means of obtaining information relative to the leading truths and fundamental principles of Public or Municipal Hygiene,hi other words of the Political Economy of Health. To the disgrace of European refinement and civilization, there is not a Chair in a single University specifically devoted to an Exposition of the great laws of Hygiene, Personal, Social, and National; so that, when a pestilence sweeps along, spreading death on every side, we have no ready knowledge at hand to put forth as a safe- guard against its ravages, nor do we know the best means, according to the principles of a natural and special Pathology, of restoring the vital functions to their normal energy, when smitten with the sword of a destroying angel like the Cholera— Miasm. We are taken by surprise. Our knowledge is below the occasion—too general, indefinite, precisionless. Everything as a preventive against a coming scourge should have been pre- arranged, and in full operation. In one point of view, man has little or no power over Cholera as a natural or destroying agent; in another, however, his influence is considerable. Subjectively, it is beyond his control; objectively, within ; and its virulence may be much modified in all that concerns Municipal and Per- sonal Hygiene. That such is the case is notorious enough, where no regard has been paid to the Political Economy of Health in densely packed masses of people ; whether it be the