A theory of the causation and suggestions for the prevention of dysentery : together with hypotheses on the causation and views as to the prevention of typhoid, cholera, yellow fever, remittent, diphtheria, typhus, and other zymotic diseases in man and animals / by Mucor.

Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A theory of the causation and suggestions for the prevention of dysentery : together with hypotheses on the causation and views as to the prevention of typhoid, cholera, yellow fever, remittent, diphtheria, typhus, and other zymotic diseases in man and animals / by Mucor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    montli or two. Defective drainage, or sewerage, was out of the question therefore. And as for malarial influence in the bush of this colony, the thing was not to be entertained for a moment in a country where a case of ague, or other paludal disease, was never heard of as an indigenous affection. 7. Besides, there was another significant fact ;5rhich precluded the idea of assigning this particular malaria as the source of the poison. The gold-fields are there still, and the people are there still, in even larger numbers. They work in the same way, and are subject to the same local influences. And yet, as in Melbourne, so on the diggings, two or three years sufficed for the extinction of epidemic dysentery—except when the factors of the poison have been set to work anew, and the previous conditions have been brought into operation again, as at new fields, or rushes, as they are called. No sooner was anything like permanency arrived at on any spot, and a more settled state of affairs obtained, than dysentery disappeared unaccountably. For, on the assump- tion of alluvial malaria, it ought to have been precisely the other way. But when the people clustered together, and converted theu' encampments into virtual townships before the passing of Munici- pal Acts, they had all the drawbacks, without any of the advan- tages, of local self-government, in the matter of hygiene. There were no means of dealing with garbage, or sewage, or refuse mat- ters of any kind, effectively. The consequence was, the collection here and there of abundant decomposing organic matter, in the midst of a teeming population. Still, in the very face of this, the specific or zymotic poison of dysentery was not generated in larger quantities, but actually died away. 8. That there was a fatal flaw somewhere in Professor Maclean's reasoning, I was now convinced. I therefore examined hi::; facts and arguments more critically and analytically, and the conclusion was forced upon me that the facts not only did not support, but were subversive of, the malarial theory. For on tracing back the history of the disease in London, as I had done in Melbourne, I brought out precisely the same result as to the disappearance of dysentery from the two places, viz. :—That dysenteric epidemics did not disappear from either city in consequence of effective sani- tary arrangements, but in spite of the most defective hygienic machinery, and of a constantly increasing saturation of the soil with impurities of ail kinds. While the disease in London was steadily on the decline, the alluvial pollution of that city was rapidly increasing; and by the time it had reached its maximum— that is, when sanitary measures were first brought into play— malignant epidemic dysentery had been unknown for a century. 9. The decadence of the looseness of Ireland is hardly to be assigned to the introduction of improvements after 1818; for it may be questioned whether, even at the present day, a tenth part of the island has been brought under such conditions as are assumed to explain the extinction of epidemic dysentery. In Scotland, pos- sibly, some apparent interdependence between drainage and the