On the application of sulphurous acid gas to the prevention, limitation, and cure of contagious diseases / by James Dewar.

  • Dewar, Sir James, (1842-1923)
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the application of sulphurous acid gas to the prevention, limitation, and cure of contagious diseases / by James Dewar. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Before entering upon the subject of the present memoir, it may be well to premise that our adoption of such an auxiliary implies a belief that the enemy of which we are in pursuit lurks about indefinitely ; that its vitality can outlive ordinary pro- cesses of decay ; and that it is transmitted by, or at least is located in the atmosphere. This being the case, we may as well assume that the germs are of parasitic, most of them of vegetable, origin; that some retain their peculiar properties, independent of temperature or climate; and that some even can (as in cholera) in a dry climate, in the form of dust, be carried by the wind to distant points, where, as they absorb moisture, they regain their power of spreading devastation. As a few practical facts are worth pages of theory, I will now explain the method by which the process here recommended is conducted; and the first experiment, I beg