Essay on the origin, symptoms, and treatment, of cholera morbus, and of other epidemic disorders, with a view to the improvement of sanitary regulations / by T. Forster.

  • Forster, T. (Thomas), 1789-1860.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay on the origin, symptoms, and treatment, of cholera morbus, and of other epidemic disorders, with a view to the improvement of sanitary regulations / by T. Forster. 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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    the children in the neighbourhood at one time for mileis round, and of which many had died. There is scarcely a disease which has not at some period or other become epidemical; nor is there a part or limb of the body that epidemia has not selected as the seat of disease. Cholei'a Morbus is only one of a numerous train of biliary and other fevers, which have been epidemic at some period or other, its origin being like theirs, obscure, its course various, and its subsidence uncertain. Authentic instances of its being imparted to attendants, from the patients, are actually wanting, and the belief in such alleged facts can only be ascribed to that sort of delusive credulity by which men of ignorant and mystifying minds are induced to give credit to talismans and charms, or to believe in the effects of sorcery, incantation, and witchcraft. I have examined the reports from India, Russia, Prussia, Poland, and Austria, and cannot find one case that in the least favours the sillv doctrine of contagion.* Dr. Albers, head Physician to the Prussian Medical Commission, in March last, reported that at Moscow, in many houses, it happened that one individual attacked by Cholera was attended indiscriminately by all the relatives, none of whom caught the disease, and all the nurses remained free from it. The Moscow Committee reported that at the opening of bodies of persons who had died of the Cholera, to the minute inspection of which four or five hours a day, for nearly a month, were devoted, neither those who attended at these operations, nor any of the assisting physicians, nor any of the attendants, caught the infection, though scarcely any precautions were used. • Dr. Maclean relates of the plaguo in Turkey, (hat those who allenil the nick never catch it, if only fresh air he admitted into the chamber durinir the intiTview.