Epidemiology, old and new / [William H. Hamer].

  • Hamer, William Heaton, 1862-1936
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Epidemiology, old and new / [William H. Hamer]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    consideration is devoted to the influenzal family of fevers. Attention was necessarily largely directed to influenza and its associates ; for the first half of the apprenticeship included the years of the great prevalences of the “ nine¬ ties ” ; moreover, these were the years in which Creighton’s History of Epidemics in Britain appeared. It thus chanced that during this period “ influenza was in the air,” being actually present in London in epidemic form, and much discussed owing to the appearance in 1891-94 of the classical work dealing with its records m times past. The impressions produced during these years were recorded in the Milroy Lectures, of 1906, on Variability and Persistency of type in Epidemic Diseases (25b). It was clear that, whether studied, in the several members of one family, or in associated prevalences of epidemic diseases in a community, influenza was remarkably variable and yet manifested a strange persistency even in its most bizarre manifestations. The writings of Creighton and Hecker on the English sweats inevitably prompted enquiry as to possible relationships with influenza. The history showed that influenza was pre-eminently, at any rate in the early centuries, a “ Sweat.” Moreover, the “ Miliaires ” and “ Picardy Sweats ” were also clearly blood relations. Yet another epidemic disease, which epidemiologically considered, claimed membership of the same family, was Dengue. Furthermore, enquiry regarding the form of the epidemic wave, in the simple case of measles, suggested comparison of the phenomena there revealed with those apparent in the far less stable influenza.
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