On the mode of communication of cholera / by John Snow.

  • John Snow
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the mode of communication of cholera / by John Snow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    small intestines, and there multiply itself by the appro¬ priation of surrounding matter, in virtue of molecular changes going on within it, or capable of going on, as soon as it is placed in congenial circumstances. Such a mode of communication of disease is not without precedent. The ova of the intestinal worms are un¬ doubtedly introduced in this way. The affections they induce are amongst the most chronic, whilst cholera is one of the most acute; but duration does not of itself destroy all analogy amongst organic processes. The writer, however, does not wish to be misunderstood as making this comparison so closely as to imply that cholera depends on veritable animals, or even ani¬ malcules, but rather to appeal to that general tendency to the continuity of molecular changes, by which com¬ bustion, putrefaction, fermentation, and the various processes in organized beings, are kept up. Whilst it is matter almost of certainty that intestinal worms are in this way communicated, it is never pos¬ sible to trace the communieation from one person to another : hence, if this be the mode of the propagation of cholera, there must often be great difficulty in de¬ tecting it. That a portion of the ejections or dejections must often be swallowed by healthy persons is, how¬ ever, a matter of necessity. The latter even are voided with such suddenness and force that the clothes and bedding scarcely fail to become soiled, and being almost devoid of colour and odour, the presence of the evacuations is not always recognised; hence they
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