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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    IS CHOLERA A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE? Before entering into the 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, whether cholera is or is not a contagious disease—permit me to say a few words on the symptoms which usher in the disease, and which, heretofore, have been so little attended to; and also permit me to say a few words on the change which takes place in the constitution of an individual about to be attacked with the pre- monitory diarrhoea, and which, heretofore, has been also so little attended to. At the time cholera, as an epidemic, attracted attention in 1817, the vomiting, spasms, etc., alone fixed attention, and received the name of cholera; the deviations from health which precede this stage were overlooked ; and even diarrhoea was consi- dered as unconnected with cholera. Having had charge of extensive military hos- pitals in the Peninsula, during the Peninsular War, and having repeatedly seen cholera, almost an epi- demic, in these establishments, and having paid at- tention to the disease; when cholera appeared in Europe as an epidemic in 1831-?, I doubted that it ever attacked, suddenly, an individual in perfect health, and free from diarrhoea.