Observations on the laws governing the communication of contagious diseases : and the means of arresting their progress. Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New-York, on the 9th of June, 1814.

  • Hosack, David, 1769-1835.
Date:
1815
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the laws governing the communication of contagious diseases : and the means of arresting their progress. Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New-York, on the 9th of June, 1814. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    stench, while the country people crowded together in narrow apart- ments suffered no less from the heat, the want of rest, and their attend- ance on each other; besides, even contact served to propagate the in- fection.* Baker's Livy. Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentions! that the disease seized studs of mares, herds of oxen, and flocks of goats and sheep, doubtless denoting that this disease was remarkably fatal to those animals when collected in numerous bodies. Orosius, in his account of the same pestilence, ob- serves, Many of the patricians were victims, but it was most fatal to the poor.J Livy also has a similar observation, that many illustrious persons died, but that among those of inferior note the virulence of the disorder spread its ravages wide. The history of the pestilence of modern times, the accounts of which are more minutely and satisfactorily detailed, no less proves that this dis- ease, when once introduced, spreads its devastation by means of a vitiated atmosphere, more especially where such vitiation proceeds from con- fined human effluvia. Accordingly, in the plague of London, in 1665, at which time nearly one hundred thousand persons perished, we are told by Hodges, that while the better sort of people had various re- sources to avoid the dreadful consequences of this fatal distemper, it was entirely confined to the poor, insomuch that some gave it the name of the poor^s plague. Lord Clarendon, in the history of his own life, * Grave tempus et forte annus pestilens erat urbi, agrisque, nee hominibus magis, quam pecori; et auxere vim morbi, tenore populations, pecoribus agrestibusque, in urbem acceptis. Ea colluvio mixtorum omnis generis animantium, et odore insolito urbauos, et agrestem confer- tum in arcta tecta, aestu ac vigiliis angebat, ministeriaque in vicem ac contagio ipsa vul^abant morbos. Tit. Liv. lib 3. c. 6. i Lib. 10. \ Lib. 2.