Volume 2

Medicina nautica : an essay on the diseases of seamen. In three volumes / by Thomas Trotter.

  • Trotter, Thomas, 1760-1832.
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medicina nautica : an essay on the diseases of seamen. In three volumes / by Thomas Trotter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    be very analogous, and to fucceed each other in a. very orderly progreflion. They are almoft all local, and fuch as might be expected to happen in a valley of confiderable width near floods of the Nile. The converfion of the river into blood will admit of the fame explanation with fupp6fed fliowers of blood; and the rain there, in the opinion of an agreeable writer, (Pott. Eflai fur la Nature, &c. torn. i. ch. 8. p. 115.) maybe co- loured red during its defcent by. the duft waflied from certain infefts, by the prefence of microfco- pical infects themfelves, or by fluids emitted by the infects; or after its fall it may acquire its fan- guine colour from oker or reddifli earth brought down from the mountains. The exceflive multi- plication oi frogs, ticks, (lice,) and all forts of flies (gnats and mufquitos) fwarming about, ftarvmg and dying upon the land, were fufficient to con- taminate the air, and generate peftilence among domeftic animals, and to caufe ulcers and burning puftules on the human fpecies. I have endea- voured elfewhere to prove, that bitter cold m the atmofphere is to be explained upon the fame ge- neral caufe which produces peftilence. The oc- currence there of hail and lightning (fee my letter to Mr. Valentin) and fubfequent darknefs are alt very natural, as well as the extraordinary pro- duction of grafshoppers (locufts,) and the mor- tality among the young Egyptians (Calmet lur l'Exode, p. 65- & fe*> ThlS «° ^ A t peftilence and hail is very remarkable, and is ftriaiy conformable to philofophical truth. There is another inftance of exemption which occurs to me, and that is of the white people of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, when fuch fad mortality prevailed among the Indians ra I763. The Indians alone luftered from itjn 5