Report on quarantine.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on quarantine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    27/476 (page 21)
    Epidemic Atmosphere, actively employed in the observation and treatment of epidemic diseases:— Sydenham, who practised while the plague ravaged England ; Mead, who studied it profoundly ; and Russell of Aleppo, who lived where it raged for three years, have all taught us that without the essential preliminary of an ' epidemic atmosphere' on the spot, foreign contagion is inert, and that unless both concur no pestilence ensues. Hence the latter states that the city of Aleppo, though in unrestricted and constant comnmnication with Eg-ypt and other parts of the Turkish empire, where the plague appears annually, used to be affected on an average only once in eighteen years. The unknown influence which they called an epidemic atmosphere was also reckoned by the ancients to be the invariable forerunner or concomitant of spreading sickness. In their judgment half the cause at least, one blade of the destroying shears, is forged at home, and without it the other cannot do the work of fate. The preponderant evidence derived from the most re- cent observation and experience in this and other countries, appears to lead to the same conclusion. We may observe, however, that the evidence here referred to has no refer- ence to mere medical opinion, but is founded on un- doubted facts recorded as the results of the experience of competent observers. Medical opinions vary, and on some important points of science clash ; but in the whole of this Report we have, as far as was practicable, cited and been guided by the results of the experience of observers who have been either eye-witnesses of the facts they record, or who have received the information they communicate from authentic sources. Cholera may be taken as an example of the diseases of the epidemic class. When cholera first invaded Europe in 1831, the belief in its contagious nature was almost uni- versal, and in this country in particular there was scarcely a medical man who did not entertain this conviction; but as in India, where this disease is known, the belief in its contagious nature is universally abandoned, so in Europe it gradually diminished in proportion as opportunities of observing the disease increased; and now in Russia, Poland, Prussia, France, Belgium, and England, the contrary view, with few exceptions, is maintained.