Contagion and infection in relation to epidemic diseases / by John Grove.

  • Grove, John, 1815-1895.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contagion and infection in relation to epidemic diseases / by John Grove. 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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    more general term in common use is virus. It is usually applied to the poison of small-pox, cow-pox, and syphilis. We do not hear, however, of the virus of scarlatina, measles, or hooping-cough, of yellow fever, or cholera; but all men are agreed as to the existence of what Sydenham would call the seminium of epidemic, endemic, and infectious diseases. It is upon this circumstance of uniform agreement on one point that I base my opinion of the necessity for the adoption of some generic term to include all that is meant by seminium, morbid poisons, infectious agents, virus, a miasma, etc. All the words we have in use derive their origin from the Greek or Latin language. Contagion, from contagio, signifies contamina- tion ; pollution, the act of contaminating or polluting. All words, as far as I know, ending in ion, imply a process, an action, or an effect, as fermentation, which conveys the idea of a process, excision, the action of cutting off, confusion, the effect of disturbance, or mis- placement of things previously in order. But it is also manifest that a word ending in ion may, according to the general tenor of the sentence in which it occurs, be made to signify either a process, an action, or an effect; contamination may thus mean the effect produced, the action going on, or the process to be gone through. In no way, however, can we reasonably apply the same word to sig- nify the cause of such process, action, or effect. The word contagion should therefore be used in that sense only which is indicated by its terminus. Infection, from infectio,1 is similar in its signification to contagion, but does not necessarily include tainting by touch. It is, however, less limited than its congener—that is to say, to infect is to dye, to stain, to poison, and anything which is dyed, stained, or poisoned, may be said to be infected with the dye or poison, so in- fection would here mean the process of infecting, the act of infecting, or the contaminating effect of a poison. We have at present no generic term to indicate the poisonous agents of disease. It is un- questionably desirable that our vocabulary should contain a word to denote what we mean by an agent of disease, and especially such a one as would admit the affix of a specific term to it with euphony. At the same time, it would be an advantage if the word could be an Anglicised Latin word, for then no difficulties could arise from mistranslation. The word contagium appears to me to supply these desiderata, for the following reasons :— 1st, It is synonymous with miasma, which, in its primary sense, is anything which pollutes, or, as Dr Adam Littleton defined it,2 1 Inficio, to poison, to infect, to corrupt. 9 Contagio, awafaia Pollution. l»fectio „ „ Contagium, pumpa \ . ,, . , c, fxn\v(Tfios\ n.vthing which pollutes or defik's.