Warning and admonition to the British public on the introduction (now well ascertained) of the cholera of India / by Sir Gilbert Blane.

  • Blane, Gilbert, Sir, 1749-1834.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Warning and admonition to the British public on the introduction (now well ascertained) of the cholera of India / by Sir Gilbert Blane. 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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    Note.—Tliis being the Fourth Edition of this little work in about four weeks, it is necessary to remark that the most persevering pains have been continued to be taken, to throw the public off their guard, by attempts to shew, in the face of evidence as strong as can be presented to the human understanding, that the disease is communicable, it becomes every candid and compassionate person to counteract these baneful endeavours.—Let us for a moment contemplate the consequence of the respective alternatives of this question. In case it should not prove to be in- fectious, there will be some degree of evil certainly from the interruption of com- merce, but there will be much good effected by the promotion of cleanliness and comfort among the poor. But if the other alternative be true, as all the well- judging people in or out of the profession that one can see or hear, believe to be the true state of the case, how deep must the regrets of him be who may have sacri - ficed the health of the community, not to mention his own peace, of mind, to a medical sophism. The writer had got thus far on this day, the 21st of November 1831, when he was invited to attend next day a Board of Health of the Parish of St. James’s, the central Board being believed to be abolished or superseded. With this invitation ill health and the infirmities of old age prevented him from complying. He has only further to observe, that two and thirty years ago he was called upon by the Privy Council to attend a like * board on occasion of two alarms which arose in the year 1799, the one regarding a threatening danger of the Plague from the commercial intercourse with Mogador, in West Barbary ; the other regarding a supposed danger from the Yellow Fever of the West Indies, and which was very generally believed to have been imported from thence the following year to Cadiz. After the numerous meetings and laborious discussions of this committee at the apartments of the Board of Trade, the Report was presented to the Privy Council, and printed in January, 1800 ; soon after which a Board of Health was appointed by public authority, and the nomination of its members being left to the President of the College of Physicians, he nominated a Board, consisting exclusively of Fel- lows of the College. This Board, after making several Reports, grounded on that of the above mentioned Committee, was dissolved. In the present stage of the business, the Writer of thi3 has only to observe, as his humble opinion, that it would perhaps have been well if a more prominent at- tention had been paid (particularly with regard to Sunderland) to the regular and reasonable supply of so great a necessary of life as Coal, at this season, of which there is a considerable enhancement of price. The Committee of 1799 being aware of this, left out Coal from among the susceptible articles, and no distress ensued. To no other cause can we ascribe the correspondence which arose be- tween the Bishop of Durham and the Authorities round Sunderland a few days ago, bearing upon these subjects, in doing which the Writer takes leave of them, with the suggestion implied in this statement, which he does through the press, his great age and infirmities preventing him from doing so by more active methods. The Author of the following able and ingenious Illustration of this subject, does not give leave to publish his name. In further illustratrating the extreme tenuity of animal effluvia he might have mentioned that of the foot of a hare, or a bird, to the sense of smell of a hound, a fact so palpable to every sportsman, and as demonstrative of the infinite divisibility of matter and its impression on the senses as perhaps any thing in nature that could be named. * This Board was constituted by the Privy Council, as authorized by a previous Act of Parliament, and consisted, besides the Medical Members (of whom the wri- ter of this, now the sole survivor, and another Member of the Medical Board of the Navy formed pait) of the following gentlemen, the Comptroller or a Commis- sioner of the Navy, two Members of the Levant Company, a Commissioner of the Customs, with the occasional assistance of such as were qualified to afford useful information, among whom the most eminent and useful was Dr. Patrick Russell, who had long been Physician to the English Factory at Aleppo, the whole under the superintendence of the first Earl of Liverpool.