Suggestions for observations on the influence of cholera and other epidemic poisons, on the lower animals / by W. Lauder Lindsay.

  • Lindsay, W. Lauder (William Lauder), 1829-1880.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suggestions for observations on the influence of cholera and other epidemic poisons, on the lower animals / by W. Lauder Lindsay. 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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    number of other animals, but the evidence is not so conclusive, as I shall iinmediately show. Few additions have been made to our know- ]ed<i;e of the subject since 1832 ; but the scattered cases which ai'e occa- sionally recorded, are of sufficient interest to show how much remains to be observed. A recent letter from Dr Furlong, Antigua,^ states, that, during the prevalence of cholera at Trinidad, travellers, in pass- ing through the woods, found the monkeys in large numbers dying and dead of the disease ; and he remarks, that domesticated or pet monkeys were equally affected. It is of interest to know, that the same animals in Trinidad were similarly affected by variola when it was epidemic. It has frequently been observed in this country, that, prior to or during epidemics of cholei'a, there have been extensive and siidden diseases in cultivated plants, such as the potato, and in domestic as well as wild animals, such as cattle, horses, sheep, ralDbits and hares, poultry, game, crows, sparrows and other birds, and even fish. But there is no conclusive evidence that the disease was, in these cases, cholera. The coincidence in date would, howevei', point to something more than an accidental relationship. In many of the recorded cases of cholera in the lower animals, the arguments in favour of the chole- roid nature of the disease are far from conclusive or convincing; in others they are only presumptive ; in very few is the proof satisfactory. Speculations, founded on appearances or resemblances, have been allowed to gain the ascendancy over rigid scientific demonstration— coincidences have been too much regarded as synonymous with effects of a common cause—the post hoc has been mistaken for the 'propter hoc. Observation and argument alike have been loose and unscientific: chemistry, histology, and pathology have seldom or never been employed as adjuncts to the inquiry. The deficiency of pathological examination, indeed, may be considered the most serious defect of all the cases of cholera in animals as yet published. The facts hitherto recorded would lead to the inference, that the cholera poison is equally deleterious to plants, the lower animals, and man, though it produces somewhat different effects in those different classes of organized beings. Such facts, however, from what I have already said, cannot be considered firmly established. It should be the object of future researches to corroborate or disprove them. So soon as it can be shown satisfactorily that epizootics during, or pre- ceding,_periodsof epidemic cholera are, in their causation and nature, choleraic, a most important point is gained ; for then cholera becomes subject to scientific experimentation. The causation of epizootic diseases has frequently been referred to the fact of animals feeding on plants affected with epidemic disease. This merolv refers us a step further back in the inquiry, whose features it does not otherwise alter; it also indicates the necessity and importance of investigating, at the same time, and in the same manner, the epidemic diseases both of plants and animals, inasmuch as they are calculated to throw liglit oil each other. ' Lancet, December 2, 18.54.