Are epidemics contagious? / by John Parkin.

  • Parkin, John, 1801-1886.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Are epidemics contagious? / by John Parkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tificate, ascribing his death to ' enteric or typhoid fever/ would have been more correct. Here then we have two or three or more gentlemen, who never saw the patient, taking upon themselves to affirm, that the prognosis of his medical attendant was erroneous; and that he died of a different disease to that which the medical certificate affirmed. And why ? Merely because he had haemorrhage from the bowels, previously to death. But this effect, 'per se, was no proof of the disease being typhoid; for it is equally characteristic of heart disease, of disease of the liver, and certain chronic affections of the bowels. This, in fact, was the cause of the death of George IY. ; but there was no talk of typhoid fever in his case. As to Dr. Giles, who only saw the patient at the commencement of the attack, he could not possibly have formed as correct an opinion of the case as Mr. Humphreys, who watched the patient from the commencement to the termination of the illness. Having, however, arrived at the above conclusion, it only remained to ascertain the way in which the patient, who had died exactly two months before, had infected so many persons in London. When evidence is required of a certain nature, testimony, in accordance with the ascertained views of the inquirer is generally forthcoming ; and so it was on the present occasion. It appears, that the farmhouse and buildings are placed on a slope ; the privy being at the highest point—at an altitude of about eight feet—and a well at the lowest. The well, which is bricked, but not cemented, and received its supply of water from a brook a short distance off, is distant from the privy between sixty and seventy feet. Up to the time of the visit, the water in the well had