First report on the object and effects of the House of Recovery in Cork-Street / by the physicians to that institution.

Date:
1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report on the object and effects of the House of Recovery in Cork-Street / by the physicians to that institution. 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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    In the of the plague. cate investigation it is altogether unquestionable; the plague ma-- be produced as an instance of this kind ; seclusion of the1 sick from the healthy is known to prevent the spreading O' this disease, thus, at Aleppo, the Europeans escape thf plague by living in the suburbs, and shutting themselves up in their houses ;* thus too, in countries frequently visited by that disease, the inhabitants of colleges and mo- nasteries, who live secluded from intercourse with then neighbours escape while pestilential disorders rage. Thus also in the year 1772, when the plague carried ofl daily, above one thousand persons in the city of Moscow the Foundling Hospital, containing above 1,400 persons.! and situated in the centre of the city, was kept almost com- pletely free from the malady during the whole period of its continuance, by cutting off all intercourse between the inhabitants of the hospital and those of the town, and fumigating all articles intended for the hospital pre- vious to their introduction ; to these means were added a careful examination of the sick each dav, and whenever any suspicious symptoms appeared, an immediate sepa- ration of them from the healthy • thus, although in seven instances the plague made its appearance, yet it never extended farther.f Stronger proofs of the contagious na- ture of the plague, are afforded us by the frequent instances of its communication through the medium of bales of cotton, or other goods brought from infeCted countries.— From combining evidence of this kind, we have proofs amounting to demonstration, that some matter is generated in the persons of those who are infeCted with this disease, capable of producing it in those previously iminfe&ed. The ■ * See Wilton on fevers, vol. i. page 420. f S an extract from De Merten’s account of the plague at Mos- cow, Med. and Chirurgical Review, vol 6. p. 72.