Result of an inquiry whether cholera can be conveyed by human intercourse from an infected to a healthy locality; or, from an infected to a healthy person : that is, is cholera a contagious disease? / by David Macloughlin.

  • Macloughlin, David, 1786-1870.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Result of an inquiry whether cholera can be conveyed by human intercourse from an infected to a healthy locality; or, from an infected to a healthy person : that is, is cholera a contagious disease? / by David Macloughlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It has been stated above, that at the time cholera, as an epidemic, attracted attention in 1817, the vomiting, spasms, etc., alone, fixed attention, and received the name of cholera—the deviations from health which precede this stage were overlooked, and even diarrhoea was considered as unconnected with cholera; and, without any knowledge of the whole morbid phenomena which constitute the dis- ease, in every country, the vomiting, spasms, etc., have been pronounced to be, or not to be, conta- gious, according as their fears, or according as their sujDposed interests, prompted them. In 1831-32, when cholera broke out as an epi- demic in Englandjitwas assumed, without any know- ledge of the pathognomonic symptoms of disease, and without any researches at the bedside into the cause or causes of the disease—it was assumed, I say, that cholera is a highly contagious disease. In 1848-49, when cholera again broke out in England as an epidemic, the General Board of Health, again without any knowledge of the patho- gnomonic symptoms of the disease, and again without any researches at the bedside, into the cause or causes of the disease, pronounced cholera not to be a contagious disease. But if we examine the docu- ments which they have brought forward to support their views, if we accept these as trustworthy, we arrive at the conclusion that the Board have proved that cholera can be transmitted by human intercourse from an infected to a healthy locality—can be trans- mitted from an infected to a healthy person—and, consequently, that cholera is a contagious disease. The Board assumed that the first case of cholera,