A systematic treatise, historical, etiological, and practical, on the principal diseases of the interior valley of North America : as they appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian, and Esquimaux varieties of its population / By Daniel Drake, M. D. Ed. by S. Hanbury Smith and Francis G. Smith.

  • Drake, Daniel, 1785-1852.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A systematic treatise, historical, etiological, and practical, on the principal diseases of the interior valley of North America : as they appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian, and Esquimaux varieties of its population / By Daniel Drake, M. D. Ed. by S. Hanbury Smith and Francis G. Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    localities, other circumstauces being equal, that we find the greatest prevalence of the Fever. 6. By the vegeto-auimalcular hypothesis, we can explain the concentrated prevalence of the Fever in certain places, as rationally as by the malarial hypothesis. Thus, its virulent reign at the head of Pensacola Bay, where there are extensive deposits of river alluvion, may be referred to the multi- plication of animalcules or germs, where they find abundance of nutriment; and in the case of the exposure of the face of a deep stratum of silt by the removal of a mill-dam on Cedar Creek ( Vol. II., }■. 31), we have only to suppose, that they immediately began to multiply upon the denuded surface. 7. It has often been observed, that the Fever has suddenly increased after rain ; and this might have arisen from the aesuscitation of organic forms rendered torpid by previous drought. 8. It may be, that cold produces a state of suspended animation in these as in many larger animals, aud in numerous plants; and that the first warm weather of spring revives and sets them to multiplying ; when they generate, what are called vernal iutermittents (or at least, a part of such cases); the origin of which cannot be rationally ascribed to malaria developed at that time. 9. Microscopic observation and analogy render it probable, that in the invisible, as well as the visible province of the organic kingdom, there are distinct species, which constitute, by their union, natural families or orders. We know that in each natural assemblage of the larger plants and animals, the species resemble each other in many internal qualities, as well as in their forms. Thus, an astringent principle pervades the various kinds of oak; a resinous principle the linear evergreens; an aromatic oil, the peppermint, and other didyuamous herbs; a poisonous principle, the different species of rims; and that a narcotic principle pervades a large assemblage of plants. We know, also, that these various active principles in each group, are in general analogous, but not identic.il ; whether we examine them by their sensible properties, with chemical reagents, or observe their effects upon the living body. Now, may it not be, that two distinct species of the same natural order of microscopic beings may produce autumnal fever'/ May not one be the cause of intermittent—the other of remittents? may not both act on the system at the same time? and may we not thus explain diversities, which are inexplicable on the malarial hypothesis? Every practi- cal physician knows, that while the juice of a variety of plants will produce the pathological condition called narcotism, the symptoms of that state, when induced by different agents, differ as widely from each other, as the symp- toms of the different forms of autumnal fever. 10. In discussing the meteoric hypothesis, it was said, thai the patho- logical effects of a certain condition of the principles of the atmosphere, are always immediate; and it might have been remarked, when treating of the malarial hypothesis, that as far as we know, the effects of gases are Likewise