Illustrations of the origin and propagation of certain epidemic diseases / by T. Herbert Barker.

  • Barker, T. Herbert (Thomas Herbert), 1814-1865
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrations of the origin and propagation of certain epidemic diseases / by T. Herbert Barker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    circle, and so contract the disorder, return themselves to their own healthy parts, although they may pass through all the phases of the disease they have contracted, they do not, as a general rule, introduce the endemic disorder into their own healthy community. It may be argued that persons coming from healthy into fever districts, come often to visit afflicted friends, and in the course of the personal visit contract the disease. This is possible but doubtful; for if a person could thus contract fever, he could communicate it in the same way on return to his own district. Further, I have seen the disease excited in a patient from entering an affected locality, without his having been in contact at all with any of the patients of the district. The following illustration is in point :— A gentleman had often complained of the offensive smell in the lower part of his house on going down in the morning ; and was compelled to open the windows and doors for some time every morning, in order to remove it. This arose from a neigh- bouring drain, and the emanations have frequently been so powerful as to have tarnished the candlesticks in the kitchen, and the brass handles of the doors, not only of his own house but of the adjoining house. In August, 1857, this gentleman was seized with fever, which he had so severely as to be con- fined to his bed for four weeks. During his illness, a nephew from another part of the country, visited next door, but had no intercourse whatever with his uncle. The nephew re- turned home, and was directly afterwards seized with fever. After the gentleman^s recovery, a shop-girl was also seized with fever, which went through precisely the same course. I have a great variety of illustrations of the reception of disease in this way. I cannot too strongly repeat, that in cases of fever arising clearly from local causes, the disease does not seem to spread out of the circle of those causes. If, therefore, there is a form of fever, which is communicable by personal intercourse, I see nothing for it, but to assume that such fever, however analo- gous in symptom to our country endemic fever, is different in origin ; that it is not lighted up in the first instance from the emanations of decomposing organic matter, but, like scarlet fever and small-pox, by a poison which is reproducible only in the living organism. In the cases of fever which have been supplied to me, it is peculiar how few could be traced to such method of trans- mission. The following illustration, from the pen of Mr. Eddowes,
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