Climate and consumption / by S. D. Bird.

  • Bird, S. D. (Samuel Dougan)
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Climate and consumption / by S. D. Bird. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    do we see and know of the results of such a change ourselves 1 Now, I think I may be allowed to speak with a certain degree of authority on this matter, as I believe nine-tenths of the chest cases coming from Europe pass under my hands at some period of their stay here, and therefore I may be supposed to be more conversant with the statistics of the subject than those whose practice is more general than special. I say this without egotism or vanity, but simply as a shoemaker might with justice claim to know more about leather than a tailor or a carpenter, for the plain reason that it is more in his line. Now I endeavoured for some time to keep notes of these cases, but found that reliable statistics were not obtainable, because all patients would not take the trouble to correspond with me after leaving here, and therefore I am necessarily unable to know in all cases the results of their residence and treatment here. Numerical deductions must therefore be wholly fallible. But the results in the large number of cases which I have been able to trace have been such as to not only justify, but amply confirm my first impressions as given in the work referred to. Were it possible, I would bring before you scores, nay hundreds of persons who came to these shores within the last eight years with confirmed tubercidosis, some with vomica in one or both lungs, who are now enjoying fair, good or even perfect health, as residents in various parts of these colonies. Many of these have continued the identical occupation in Melbourne under which these symptoms originated in the large towns of the United Kingdom. I would engage to produce (would the patients themselves permit it) more cases of indubitable arrested phthisis in Melbourne at this very time, the result of the change from Europe, than are shown in the much praised statistics of Dr. Williams during his 36 years experi-. ence. Of course no human prescience can foretell when the symptoms might re-appear under exciting conditionSj but I mean cases where all morbid action has ceased, the natural weight or some- thing near it has 6een regained, and the patient is able to perform all the duties, afld enjoy all the pleasures, of life. Many of our leading professional men and merchants, who now go by the name of old chums, were sent out here with phthisical symptoms. It is seldom that there are not two or three well-known clergymen from home in our pulpits preaching with a vigour which they had little hope of regaining when they left Europe. I am not ignoring the fact that many cases of of phthisis so arriving get worse and die here or go back to die. How can it be otherwise ? This must be a fatal disease, under whatever circumstances, to a considerable proportion of those attacked. What I am contending is, that we see far more cases of recovery here than we ever did in Europe. But if the change to this climate is in a vast majority of cases the most potent alterative that can be used to arrest phthisis originating in Europe, it is also easy enough to show that, in itself, this climate is deficient in those faults and peculiarities which aid so much in the develop- ment of the tubercular diathesis in Northern Europe. All statistics of general hospitals, and of the mortality of centralizing populations like ours are fallacious to a degree, when called upou as witnesses in