Volume 1

A system of medicine / edited by J. Russell Reynolds.

Date:
1866-1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of medicine / edited by J. Russell Reynolds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    129/976 (page 109)
    in the larger intestines, yet dysentery does not result. Is it not that, for the reasons already assigned, less malaria is evolved from the soil ? It seems that just in proportion as we have banished malaria, so have we got rid of dysentery. Tor a long time the prisoners in the Penitentiary at Millbank were subject to visitations of dysentery at those seasons, and in those states of atmosphere, which most favour the decomposition of organic matter in the soil. The late Dr. Paly, then physician to the prison, in the Gulstonian Lectures for 1847, has given a most instructive account of an outbreak of this kind. Dr. Baly lias shown that the disease which prevailed in Millbank prison was precisely the same in its symptoms, course, and lesions, as that described by Sydenham, and by writers on tropical diseases of the present time. He investigated its cause with much care, and was led to the conclusion that it was “ due to a poison introduced from without, viz. a malaria rising from the soil,” and that all the conditions required for its production abounded in the close vicinity of the prison. In India, dysentery prevails most and is most fatal in moist alluvial soils containing organic matter in a state of decomposition, as for example, very notably, in Calcutta. It is no doubt true that the disease is sometimes seen, and that in a malignant form, in places which are not alluvial. I cannot Mve a better example of this than the old infantry barracks at Secunderabad m the Deccan, of dysenteric notoriety ; but there, as at Millbank the conditions necessary for the production of malaria were only too abundant. J 0,^0 Sac but instructive history of those barracks has been given by Staff-burgeon Crawford and the writer of this article, in the Army Sanitary Deport tor 1860. The barracks stand (for notwithstanding their dreadful history they are still in use) on low ground, swampy one side, and overshadowed by rocks on the other, exposed to the malarious influences of the marsh in the south-west monsoon while the locks on the other sine shut out the invigorating north-east wind A grave-yard, now closed, is placed close to the buifi^a??S r level and m the direction of the natural drainage ; another at a “ distance and m a less objectionable site, is on the south side ie surface and subsoil are thoroughly saturated with organic matter’ the removal of which is impracticable. The neighbouring soil until recently, when something has been done to fill them up was furrowed by ravines m which ordure was deposited by native! the ^ accommodation was of the worst Possible poL, ’ th® PlnT placed, the barracks were invSbFy overerSS °? by a high wall. Here were oil thP Ani rr ^d> and surrounded makma. and the causation and propagation”3 disease.6 ******* of malignant dysmtem/ was Shocking* Fof from >0TO » of » >ate rS 18^ ^