A practical sketch of the Asiatic cholera of 1848 : its rationale and (presumed) pathology / by S.F. Statham.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical sketch of the Asiatic cholera of 1848 : its rationale and (presumed) pathology / by S.F. Statham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    increased number of internal diseases in November; and from the presence of the cbolera poison, these were determined to the intestinal canal as diarrhoea: correspondingly, cases called “fever in dispensary practice (being generally a chill or reaction from it) are much in- creased in November, and both but slightly so in October; there were, however, many cases of diarrhoea in October, 1848, probably partly accounted for by the air being often fully saturated with moisture, more than in 1847, much more than in September, 1848. In December, there was rather more moisture in the air, the barometer and thermometer rather higher and a southerly wind, the sudden changes rather more often than the year before, so that hardly any excess of diarrhoea, pulmonary complaints, or of “fever,” over the former year could be expected; but from the much greater saturation of the air with moisture, and the numerous sudden changes of temperature, in spite of a southerly wind in both years, numerous cases were to be expected in both. Thus in December, 1847, many cases of pulmonary complaint and of “fever” occurred. In December, 1848, however, a new agent was present, and this determined the action of the weather to the intestinal canal; hence pulmonary complaints and “fever” were not half the amount of the former year. In January, 1849, there was about the same large amount of moisture in the air, the barometer rather lower, the thermometer higher; in both years cold winds, especially in 1848; many sudden changes of temperature in 1849. We should expect, therefore, numerous diseases both years, which, in 1848, occurred, as usual, as pulmonary complaints, while in 1849, the cholera was not forgotten; and though numerous pulmonary complaints regained their pre- eminence, with many of “fever,” still a large number (but much less than in the two previous months) of cases of diarrhoea applied for relief. It may fairly be concluded from this, that the weather alone is answerable for a larger number of cases of internal affections in the last quarter of 1848, as compared with 1847, thereby accounting for the somewhat increased number of cases of diarrhoea in the adjoining parishes, Amersham and Missenden, and doing away with all necessity of supposing any choleraic poison to have existed in the atmosphere at that time; indeed, as the “onus probandi” rests with those many and talented writers who assert the poison to be propagated through the atmosphere essentially, as long as wo can account in another way for the facts seeming to support the opinion, that assertion must yet remain a mere opinion, at least as regards the propagation of Asiatic cholera in England. During the prevalence of the cholera,