Notes on the origin, nature, prevention, and treatment of Asiatic cholera / by John C. Peters.

  • Peters, John C. (John Charles), 1819-1893.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on the origin, nature, prevention, and treatment of Asiatic cholera / by John C. Peters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    92/256 (page 74)
    exciting causes. The fii-st, is the septic cholera, or that arising from exposure to poisonous gases ; second, common cholera, or cliole)'a moi'hus, or endemic hepatic cholera ; and third, the epidemic-intestinal, or true Asiatic cholera. The first, he as- sumes, atfects those who are exposed to animal effluvia, whether from dissecting-rooms, or abattoirs, offensive privies and sew- ers, or noxious gases in general. The second arises from a bilious condition ; or use of improper food in the summer time, such as unripe melons, cucumbers, cherries, spoiled crabs, lobsters, fish, &c.; or from sudden changes of tempera- ture, causing a check of perspiration; or frequently from all these causes combined. These two are not contagious in the slightest degree, nor capable of being generated ex- cept by the operation of the original exciting causes. In the case of Mrs. Jenkins, in New York, he also sees no reasons for looking beyond septic cholera, for the cause of sickness and death, for she was attacked as many persons engaged in removiug night-soil are, when they first begm this occupation and, ai'e not inured to the sickening, filthy odors which then assail them. In the Home for Aged Females in Boston, twenty-seven of the inmates were attacked in 1865, in one night, with septic cholera, but only one died. In Edinbm-gh this form of cholera is not uncommon; the water supply is good, and brought from a distance in pipes, and not contaminated by sewage ; wells and pumps are not used. The street dirt, and all that is offensive is removed, once or twice daily, by an efficient corps of scavengers, so that large profits ai'e realized by the sale of street manure. But the sewerage is inadequate, and the watcr-clusets, except a few that are well constinicted and trapped, are often noxious and most disgusting nuisances, and insidious sources