On the efficacy of carbonic acid gas in the diseases of tropical climates : with directions for the treatment of the acute and chronic stages of dysentery / by John Parkin.

Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the efficacy of carbonic acid gas in the diseases of tropical climates : with directions for the treatment of the acute and chronic stages of dysentery / by John Parkin. 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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    low, alluvial, and swampy tracts, at the mouths and banks of rivers—situations admirably adapted for com- merce, and rich in all the varied productions of the vegetable world, but ill-suited, and highly destructive, to animal life. It is in such places that malaria exists to the greatest extent, a fact, however, which man, in his eager search after wealth, is alike regardless of and indifferent to, until he finds too late that he has bartered his present happiness for a good which, when obtained, he is incapable of enjoying. But it is not the curtailment of the short span of human life that is alone to be lamented. We must regard, with no less compassion and regret, the miserable state of existence endured by the majority of those destined to inhabit the localities where malaria is generated in great abundance. As, however, the pictures which such ma- ladies form have been painted in colours so vivid by other writers, I shall content myself with referring the reader to their numerous works, and conclude this chapter with a single quotation from an author who has devoted three octavo volumes to this single subject. “ Death here,” says Dr. Macculloch, speaking of Italy, (and the comparison will hold good with the greater number of the fertile and alluvial plains within the tropics) “ walks hand in hand with the sources of life, sparing none ; the labourer reaps his harvest but to die, or he wanders amidst the luxuriousness of vegetation and wealth, the ghost of a man, a sufferer from his cradle to his impending grave ; aged even in childhood, and laying down in misery that life which was but one disease.”