Sketch of the medical and statistical history of epidemic fevers in Ireland, from 1798, and of pestilential diseases, since 1823 : with an appendix, consisting of a dissertation on the pathology of fever, edit. Dublin, 1826, and a comparative view of cholera morbus -- edit. Dublin, 1832 -- illustrated by cases / by William Stoker.

  • Stoker, Gulielmus, 1773-1848.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sketch of the medical and statistical history of epidemic fevers in Ireland, from 1798, and of pestilential diseases, since 1823 : with an appendix, consisting of a dissertation on the pathology of fever, edit. Dublin, 1826, and a comparative view of cholera morbus -- edit. Dublin, 1832 -- illustrated by cases / by William Stoker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    (> am persuaded, that however difficult that may be, it can in no case be more indispensable, and hardly more important, than in enquiring the cau- ses of the rapid advance of disease in the Irish metropolis, as if in defiance of the extensive apparatus, and of the numerous means provided there to check the progress of contagion. The extraordinary phenomena, both moral and physical, which pari passu have accompanied that long-continued progress of disease, have been noticed since 1804, in the annual reports from the Fever Hospital and House of Recovery, Cork street.* That parallel may be found traced at the eighth and twenty succeeding pages of the second part of my u Pathological Observations/' published in 1829,f and still further extended in the Practical View of Ireland, published in 183J, by James Butler Bryan, Esq., Barrister at Law.£ But other motives, wThich also influenced my previous efforts, induce me to renew them; namely, to promote a sounder Pathology than is likely to result from contests between exclusive Solidists and exclusive Hemoralists. Desirous, as on previous occasions, to draw the notice of Pathologists more closely to the constant connection which I observed as our epi- demics have advanced to pestilence—between morbid changes in the blood, and debility or derangement of the vital functions—and to the important question, Were these synchronous phenomena merely acci- dental, or were they ancillary ? Also, How far were they mutually de- pendant at the beginning, and during the progress of disease?'' Questions which have become, yearly, more and more interesting as successive sys- tems have failed in generating a practice, effectual as it should be, in preventing and curing diseases. The comparative value of successive speculations too, during their temporary application to transient changes, can be best shown by placing them in the order in wThich one was pro- posed on the destruction of another; and the fitness of what remains of their debris for a more enduring structure can be more fully estimated. (Vid. note A, appendix.)§ Proud to acknowledge the aid which my former attempts similarly and arduously directed, met with on the Continent, (especially in a critique by Dr. Steinheim, in the Magazine of German Literature, and in Great Britain,|| I beg to give the following ex- tracts with that view, as well as in justification of myself, viz.: a About forty years ago, (Dr. Steinheim s Critique continues,) Cullen first advanced in Edinburgh the doctrine of Sthenia and As- thenia; which had extended itself over Europe for half a century under different names, and manifold shapes. Its intellectual course *' passed two points of Culmination ; the former in Brown, the latter t( in Broussais. And now comes the second extinguishing blow from • See Annual Reports from the Cork-st. Fever Hospital for 1806, 7,11< and 16. t See Pathological observations, part 1, Dub. 1823 j part 2, Dub. 1829 ; and part 3, Dub. 1830. I A Practical View of Ireland, by J. B. Bryan, Esq., 1831. § See a dissertation on the Institutes of Medicine, particularly relating to the Pathology of Fever. || Med. Chirur. Review, new series, No. 1. 155. June, 1824 j London Med*