Cholera gleanings : a family hand book, enabling readers of all classes to judge for themselves of the great error into which governments were unfortunately led by men looked upon as infallible guides, who very strenuously maintained the cholera to be a disease during which 'the living shall fly from the sick they should cherish' / by Dr. J. Gillkrest, inspector general of army hospitals, and corresponding member of the Paris National Academy of Medicine.

  • Gillkrest, J. (James), -1853
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cholera gleanings : a family hand book, enabling readers of all classes to judge for themselves of the great error into which governments were unfortunately led by men looked upon as infallible guides, who very strenuously maintained the cholera to be a disease during which 'the living shall fly from the sick they should cherish' / by Dr. J. Gillkrest, inspector general of army hospitals, and corresponding member of the Paris National Academy of Medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    disease in those not cut ploy ad in attending on the sieht—n this, clearly, makes all the difference in those cases; for there is no earthly reason why people ahout the sick should not be attacked if they breathe the same atmosphere which causes so particular an effect in producing the disease in others; indeed, there are good reasons why, during an epi- demic, attendants should be attacked in greater proportion than others, for, the constant fatigue, night work, &c, must greatly predispose them to disease of any kind : those ques- tions are now well understood as to yellow fever, about which so many misconceptions and mystifications had ex- isted, chiefly in consequence of the efforts—I must say the unjustifiable efforts (as I am fully prepared at any time to shew)—of the present Chief of Quarantine in England, Sir Wm. Pym. If we proceed to the statements from St. Petersburg, we find Dr. Lefevre, Physician to our Embassy in that City, re- porting to the following effect:— As far as my practice is concerned, both in the quarter allotted to me, and also in private houses in different parts of the town, I have no proof whatever that the disease is contagious. The first patient I saw was upon the third day of the epidemic ; and, upon strict inquiry, I could not trace the least connection between the patient, or those who were about her person, with that part of the town where it first ap- peared—a distance of several versts [each verst about % of a mile]. As regards the attendants on the sick, in no one instance have 1 found them affected by the disease, though, in many cases, they paid the most assiduous attention, watched day and night by the beds of the afflicted, and administered to all their wants. I knew four sisters watch anxiously over a fifth severely attacked with cholera, and yet receive no injury from their care.
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