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.

    162/976 (page 142)
    may not be some form of poison which may not be volatile, or which may require time to become so, or to develop its poisonous properties and capability of infection. A volatile poison, at all strong in its action, would be most dangerous to all about the sick, and yet in India the medical men, nurses, hospital coolies, sweepers, and others who are constantly engaged about the sick, do not appear to be more liable than the rest of the population. The disease seldom spreads from bed to bed in a ward ; on the contrary, when people are attacked in hospital they lie generally in a distant corner, or in another ward. I have noticed this over and over again, and though I have been connected with the large hospital of the Medical College at Calcutta for many years, I do not recollect any spreading to the nearest or neighbouring patients. I should, as far as my own experi- ence goes, say that Cholera does not spread from the sick to the whole by any rapidly acting emanation. Dr. Morehead’s observations support the view of the non-spreading of Cholera in hospitals through contagion. They were carefully conducted through three epidemics in Bombay, and though he refrains from drawing positive conclusions, his facts are not in favour of contagion. His observations will be found in his valuable Clinical Researches on Diseases in India. Sir Ranald Martin states, that of the five native keepers and washers of clothes of the Calcutta European General Hospital, who during twenty-five years had kept and washed all the hospital clothing, not one had Cholera, nor had those who assisted them. The same may be said of the dressers and sweepers. In England, in spite of some suspicious instances, the washers of soiled linen and bedding do not seem to have suffered out of proportion to others. In Dr. Baly’s report, he analyses the reputed cases of contagion from this cause, and shows that out of thirty-five reported cases seven only seem to support the contagion theory. It is remarkable that the washers of large collections of linen, soiled by cholera patients, in many large hospitals, did not suffer seriously in 1849. Dr. Waller Lewis’s report to the Board of Health, in 1849, shows the error of the assertions of con- tagion as regards the case of a number of washerwomen reported to have caught the disease by washing soiled linen, and whose cases he personally investigated. Against the foregoing may be quoted the cases reported by Dr. Barry before referred to ; also the Report of the Committee of 1861, which records that, as far as that epidemic was concerned, the patients in hospital did suffer more than their proportion of attacks. Out of hospital the cases to strength were 4-7, the deaths to strength, 2-9, and deaths to treated, 627 per cent. In hospital, among patients, the cases to strength were 13.5, the deaths to strength, 10'6, and the deaths to cases, 78-5 per cent. This applies to the whole of the troops attacked with 'the epidemic in thirteen stations, omitting Meean Meer and Morar, in which the proportions were higher than the above. In- cluding these stations, the cases to strength were 147, the deaths to strength 11-6, and the deaths to cases 79.2 per cent. So that it is