Practical observations on continued fever, especially that form at present existing as an epidemic : with some remarks on the most efficient plans for its suppression / by Robert Graham.

  • Graham, Robert, 1786-1845.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on continued fever, especially that form at present existing as an epidemic : with some remarks on the most efficient plans for its suppression / by Robert Graham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    theory, show that we are not yet ripe for giving a plausible rationale of the disease. I am wil- ling, then, to hope that every little communi- cation made to the public from actual practice, may have its use, and I shall, in what I am to write, confine myself entirely to what I have seen, disclaiming any intention of giving a full history of the disease, but professing only to draw the attention to such phenomena as seem to me to have, for the most part, too little im- portance given to them. It is constantly stated by almost every prac- titioner in this city, that for several years pre- vious to 1812, there had scarcely been any continued fever in Glasgow,—I mean scarcely any of a contagious nature, and which ap- proached to typhus in its appearance. This is a curious circumstance in the history of this disease, and has been attributed, I am persuaded, erroneously, to a variety of causes. The most plausible of these is the supposed effect of the erecting a public Infirmary here, possessing all the advantages derived from modern experience in the construction of such buildings. It was supposed that this gave a facility of confining the infected, of secluding them from the mass of the inhabitants, and that this prevented the spreading, and finally effected the extinction of the contagious matter. I am very far indeed