Reflections on cholera / by Alexander Hamilton Howe, M.D.

  • Howe, Alexander Hamilton.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reflections on cholera / by Alexander Hamilton Howe, M.D. 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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    universal epidemic in the year 1848-49, and I resolved unweariedly to add to my collection of epidemic diseases, all that I should meet with by the most industrious research; and as all that I met with still coincided with an eighteen year and a half return, I was so far confirmed in the truth of the theory which I had adopted. But lest I should seem to be reasoning on too narrow a basis from a single anticipated verification of my computation, I determined that I would again wait for the next expected return of Cholera in 1866, resolving in this instance, that if the epidemic should again become prevalent and universal, and my conclusions should again be verified, I would give my labours to the public, and that if Cholera did not become a universal epidemic in the year 1866, I would suppress my views altogether. The year 1866 has arrived, the Cholera epidemic has come, and threatens to become more universally spread than ever it has yet been before. Now, I humbly ask, is there any other way of account- ing for these two important facts of the application of a law derived from the intimate study of their previous occurrence in the world to two foreseen and anticipated epidemics than in the way of intelligent and laboured calculations ? I regret that my views have not met with that acqui- escence and concurrence that I should have expected the scientific world to ac cord to a wellverified scientific fact; and I regret this all the more as the neglect of these simple and easily ascertained facts involves a mortality