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.

    161/976 (page 141)
    virulence, and they fled panic-stricken to their homes, which weie generally at a distance of several days’ journey in the interior of tire hills. Up to this time Cholera had been unheard of m Curwnal, 01 in any part of the neighbouring mountains. This is a fact which was carefully inquired into and thoroughly ascertained. Many ot the workpeople who had fled from the Bliabur died upon the way to then homes; many others were attacked when they reached their villages. Then Cholera broke out among the other inhabitants of the villages, commencing in very many instances in the families of the men who had brought the disease from below. For a considerable time Cholera was entirely confined to places which had been in direct communica- tion with persons suffering from the disease, but in the course of a few weeks it had become impossible any longer to trace such con- nexion, and Cholera became generally epidemic in the hills. Many of the first cases were carefully investigated ; it appeared to be proved, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that in many instances Cholera had never been heard of in the villages until the arrival of the men from the Bhabur, who were the first attacked by it. ... There were no other circumstances that could be discovered which appeared to throw even the possibility of doubt upon the fact that Cholera was brought by human intercourse into a district, which, up to that time, had been perfectly free from every sign of the disease.” There are other instances brought forward by Mr. Strachey, communicated by Mr. B. W. Colvin, C.S. and Dr. F. Pearson, Superintendent of Vaccina- tion in Kumaon, but the limits of this paper prevent their introduc- tion. Although it is probable that Cholera is spread by human intercourse, it is indisputable that it originates in places without it being possible to trace any previous communication with infected persons. This has happened over and over again in towns and large establishments in which the outbreaks, after the greatest perseverance, could not be accounted for by any previous exposure to infection. Its appearance at St. Kilda, in the Western Islands of Scotland, is as strong an instance as can be given. This island was cut off from all communi- cation with the mainland, and yet the disease appeared in it suddenly without a trace of importation. In 1848, Dr. Parkes could not trace any contagious origin for the first cases occurring in London Contagion of Cholera.—The fact of the diffusion of Cholera by human intercourse leads us to inquire how this operates, and to the question of the Contagion of Cholera. Diffusion by contagion does not negative the possibility of an origin independent of infection. Ike majority of medical men in India, accustomed to see Cholera year after year, to be m constant intercourse with the Cholera sick and to see the general immunity of hospital attendants and of them- rff6S’ CrbtT h? C0ntagl0usness- Some physicians, however think differently. It does not seem proved that contagion can exist in the shape of a volatile poison emanating from the sick and nm'dlv mfeotog the healthy. It would not be°so easy to