Result of an inquiry whether cholera can be conveyed by human intercourse from an infected to a healthy locality, or, from an infected to a healthy person : that is, is cholera a contagious disease? / by David Macloughlin.

  • Macloughlin, David, 1786-1870.
Date:
MDCCCLVI [1856]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Result of an inquiry whether cholera can be conveyed by human intercourse from an infected to a healthy locality, or, from an infected to a healthy person : that is, is cholera a contagious disease? / by David Macloughlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    having made any scientific researches at the bed- side, maintained that cholera is a contagious disease. Therefore, the Congress, to arrive at a result, followed a middle course: each party gave way a little, and the congress modified the quarantine laws relative to cholera—leaving the question whether cholera is or is not a contagious disease where they found it—undecided. In 1853, when cholera re-appeared here as an epidemic, it was again suggested to the General Board of Health that the question as to whether cholera is or is not a contagious disease should be studied in the manner it had been proposed in 1849; but the Board again declined to do this. In 1854, when cholera reappeared here, again, as an epidemic, the same suggestions were made to the Board of Health, but with no better success. And the Board have published their Report on the cholera which raged here in 1854—and, judging from this Report, without having investigated at the bedside the important question which it was their duty specially to investigate—that is, its etiology. And still judging from this Report, we arrive at the painful conviction that the Board have not even studied at the bedside the rise and progress of the symptoms of the disease—and that consequently they are not acquainted with the pathognomic symptoms of the disease. In 1855, when cholera reappeared in London, again as an epidemic, it was determined to undertake the inquiry in the manner it had been so frequently suggested to the General Board of Health; and