Is the cholera spasmodica of India a contagious disease? : the question considered in a letter addressed to Sir Henry Halford, Bart., M.D., President of the Board of Health, &c. &c. &c. / by William Macmichael.

  • Macmichael, William, 1783-1839.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Is the cholera spasmodica of India a contagious disease? : the question considered in a letter addressed to Sir Henry Halford, Bart., M.D., President of the Board of Health, &c. &c. &c. / by William Macmichael. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    If it were possible that the disease should be ex- cited by the air, what could save the English residents from its attacks ? They are as much exposed to the influence of the atmosphere, particularly to the pesti- lential blasts from the south, as if they were walking the streets of Constantinople, and yet they uniformly escape. But it may be observed that the wind here blows generally from the east or west, that is, up or down the channel of the Bosphorus ; and when it sets in from the west, which is often the case, the gales are charged with the effluvia from the city of Constantinople. Nor is the assertion true, that the Turks themselves have no idea of the infectious nature of the plague ; many of them believe it to be so, and the most enlightened of them all, the Pasha of Egypt, adopts a quarantine for his own security. When the plague is at Cairo, he either retires to a garden situated about two leagues from the city, and sur- rounds himself by his troops, or he shuts himself up in a fortress on the other side of the Nile at Gizeh. It is not my intention to enumerate the various plagues that have, at different times, made their appearance in Europe, but the features of the following story are so striking, and all the particulars are detailed with so much circumstantiality, that it carries with it an irre- sistible conviction of its truth. It is an account given by Mead, of the introduction of the plague into the Peak of Derbyshire; and whether we consider the remoteness of the spot from the original source of in- fection, the distinctness of the channel by which the contagion was conveyed, or the judicious and effectual