On the mode of communication of cholera / by John Snow.

  • John Snow
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the mode of communication of cholera / by John Snow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/214 (page 4)
    The following instances are quoted from an interesting work by Dr. Simpson of York, entitled ^^Observations on Asiatic Cholera”:—The first cases in the series occurred at Moor Monkton, a healthy agricultural village, situated to the north-west of York, and distant six miles from that place. At the time when the first case occurred, the ma- lady was not known to be prevailing anywhere in the neighbourhood, nor, indeed, at any place within a dis- tance of thirty miles. “ John Barnes, aged 89, an agricultural labourer, became severely indisposed on the 28th of December 1882; he had been suffering from diarrhoea and cramps for two days previously. He was visited by Mr. George Hopps, a respectable surgeon at Redhouse, who, finding him sinking into collapse, requested an interview with his brother, Mr. J. Hopps, of York. This experienced practitioner at once recognised the case as one of Asiatic cholera; and, having bestowed considerable attention on the investigation of that disease, immediately enquired for some probable source of contagion, but in vain: no such source could be discovered. When he repeated his visit on the day following, the patient was dead; but Mrs. Barnes (the wife), Matthew Metcalfe, and Benjamin Mus- croft, two persons who had visited Barnes on the preced- ing day, were all labouring under the disease, but reco- vered. John Foster, Ann Dunn, and widow Creyke, all of whom had communicated with the patients above named, were attacked by premonitory indisposition, which was however arrested. Whilst the surgeons were vainly endeavouring to discover whence the disease could pos- sibly have arisen, the mystery was all at once, and most unexpectedly, unravelled by the arrival in the village of the son of the deceased John Barnes. This young man was apprentice to his uncle, a shoemaker, living at Leeds.