Volume 1

Annals of influenza, or epidemic catarrhal fever in Great Britain, 1510-1837 / prepared and edited by Theophilus Thompson.

  • New Sydenham Society.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annals of influenza, or epidemic catarrhal fever in Great Britain, 1510-1837 / prepared and edited by Theophilus Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    INTRODUCTION. The laws which regulate Epidemic Diseases are well en- titled to careful investigation. The variations of the same disease on different occasions of its epidemic prevalence, are so considerable, as to have elicited from the observant and judi- cious Sydenham the remark, that on each fresh visit of such disease he had to work out for himself a fresh knowledge of the appropriate plan of treatment. But the advantages which the inquiry presents are not confined to its practical relation to individual instances of such disease. They spread through- out the whole compass of Etiology, and tend to illustrate the causes which affect human life in the aggregate. Influenza, the epidemic to the description of which this Volume is de- voted, possesses, in this point of view, a special interest, being of all epidemics the most extensively diffused, and apparently the least liable to essential modification, either by appreciable atmospheric changes, or by hygienic conditions under the control of man. It is not like Smallpox, communicable by inoculation; and, however, its fatality may be influenced by defective drainage, it is not like Typhus, traceable to this neglect as its cause. Unlike Cholera, it outstrips in its course the speed of human intercourse. It does not, like Plague, desert for ages a country which it has once afflicted, nor is it accustomed, like the Sweating-Sickness, in any marked manner