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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    by his excretions to the surrounding atmosphere, rendering it thus capable of producing the same disease in those who may be exposed to its influence. The communication of this virus from the sick to the well, in whatever form it may be conveyed, as uniformly produces the same disease, as inoculation excites the smallpox, or vaccination conveys the vaccine virus. So far, then, there is something in common in the communication of contagious or infectious diseases, which should be accordingly ex- pressed in the language we employ—some of those diseases are conveyed in one form, others in a different; we should then be equally careful to mark those circumstances in which they differ, as well as those which they possess in common. Such an arrangement appears to me not only practicable, but, at the same time, calcu- lated, in some degree, to harmonize the differences of opinion which now separate the con- tagionists and non-contagionists. Under these impressions, I propose to arrange those diseases which are communicable from one to another under three heads. First, those which are communicated exclusively by contact. In this class I enumerate The Itch, Syphilis, The Sibbens of Scotland, The Laanda of Africa, Frambaesia, or Yaws, Elephantiasis, or Leprosy, Hydrophobia, and The Vaccine virus. Neither of those diseases can be communicated in any other way than by contact; they are, therefore, contagious diseases, in the strict etymological sense of the term. It is also to be remarked, that these diseases are never conveyed through the medium of the atmosphere; actual contact alone can communicate them from one person to another. These diseases, acknowledged by all to be contagious, and so denominated by all wri- ters, have a law of communication peculiar to themselves. But there is a second class of diseases also considered as contagious, which are communicated under different circum- stances, governed, in this respect, by different laws of communication. Those to which I now allude are such as are communicated both by contact and by the atmosphere. In this class I arrange Small pox, Measles, Chicken pox, Hooping cough,