Observations on contagion / [Whitley Stokes].

  • Stokes, Whitley, 1763-1845
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on contagion / [Whitley Stokes]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    furniture, or clothing brought into the house ; they should occasionally wash their blankets ; and all classes of people should generally avoid crowded places, and keep their servants as much at home as is practicable. Of avoiding exciting causes I shall say little ; but what I say may apply, not only to the causes that produce the disease, but to those which encrease its danger. It is well established, that in the usual Typhus the common people are more susceptible; the gentry more in danger. The same observations are usually made in the present epidemic, and pecu¬ liarly confirmed to me by a physician in a principal town of the North, on whose general observations I have long relied most strongly. The greater susceptibility of the poor is probably owing to filth and damp : the greater danger of the rich is not so easily accounted for. The upper classes seem peculiarly liable to diseases of the brain, which organ Typhus attacks often, and in this epi¬ demic very frequently. A gentleman usually uses his mind more, and his body less than a peasant, or mechanic ; he uses more stimulating food and drink, warmer bedding, later hours, and is less in the open air. If the gentleman, preserving his advantages in cleanliness, and in the dryness of his house, can, in a gradual, prudent manner, assimulate his life to that i