A treatise on fever : being part of a course of lectures on the theory and practice of medicine / by Robert D. Lyons.

  • Lyons, Robert D. (Robert Dyer), 1826-1886.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on fever : being part of a course of lectures on the theory and practice of medicine / by Robert D. Lyons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of that splendid army of over 300,000 men which France supplied in the late Eussian war, was caused by fevers, or the diseases secondary to fevers. The whole of the French losses by injury and diseases in the Crimean campaign, may be taken at very close to 70.000 ; the report of the Frencli Minister at War gives the numbers at 66,000. On the side of England 10.000 men of the flower of the British army were carried off by disease in seven months, in the first Avinter’s campaign in the Crimea. From the 1st Sep- tember, 1854, to April 1855s, 4,228 men perished from disease in the hosjiitals of Scutari alone, of whom but 359 died of wounds. Accurate figures are out of the question, and were unattainable even on the spot; but from my own personal observation, I am induced to believe that an immense jiroportion of these deaths was the result of fever and the diseases secondary to fever. Wlien dealing with the subject of typhus, I shall perhaps be induced to give you some brief historic notices of the great ravages com- mitted within tlie present century, and at the close of the past, by the terrible fever epidemic known as the Kriegs~2jest, or war plague, and which, originating in the great armies that then turned the plains of Europe into a series of vast slaughter-houses, con- tinued to ravage camp and battle-field, cities and country districts, for many years subsequently. But if we Avant the most striking e\ddence from figures, of the terrible Avaste and destruction of life involved in great fe\er epidemics, Ave need not go beyond the records of oiu? own country, in Avhich, for ages, the typhus has had its home. At no time, as it would seem, Avithin the historic period hi Ireland, has a centirry passed unmarked by