Asiatic cholera : its cause and cure, discovered and demonstrated / by Thomas Harvey.

  • Harvey, Thomas.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Asiatic cholera : its cause and cure, discovered and demonstrated / by Thomas Harvey. 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.

    11/44 (page 11)
    ] 1 Specifics for the cure of Cholera were prof- fered on every side, but few or none ventured to predicate anything respecting the modus ope- randi of the proposed remedies, and the most opposite modes of treatment were as confidently advocated by different practitioners. I did not hesitate to subscribe to the opinion expressed by one medical man of this metropolis, in his letter published in the Times newspaper at that period, that Cholera is not produced by a specific poison in the atmosphere ■—but I regret he did not communicate some- thing of a positive character respecting the origin of the disease, and state at least to what specific causes he attributed the incipient stages of Cholera. Regarding the disturbance of the equili- brium, or what I may call the natural condition of the atmosphere, as the primary cause of the disease, I concluded that a deficiency of oxygen had probably destroyed that equilibrium, and if such deficiency were discovered, I thought I could clearly trace the direct and immediate connexion between such a cause and the effects produced in every case of true Asiatic Cholera ; and it is now my intention to endeavour to demonstrate the fact, that nothing but a deficiency of oxygen in the atmosphere can produce Cholera in its true type; and if I succeed in the proof of this proposition, the