Some considerations on the nature and pathology of typhus and typhoid fever : applied to the solution of the question of the identity or non-identity of the two diseases / by Alexander P. Stewart.

  • Stewart, Alexander Patrick, 1813-1883.
Date:
[1840]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some considerations on the nature and pathology of typhus and typhoid fever : applied to the solution of the question of the identity or non-identity of the two diseases / by Alexander P. Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    soever, to a person previously in health. By contagion, I under- stand a mode of infection, viz. infection by contact. As applied to the subject of fevers, it will at once be seen that infection has not merely a reference to disease, but to miasmata, or specific poisons, independent of disease, to the contaminating agent, as well as the individual contaminated, and communicating disease. In this point of view, the question is set at rest by the remarks offered under the first head. Hence, we consider typhus as a truly and eminently infectious disease. The same, we hare seen, cannot be said of typhoid fever. The question, then, we have now to consider, reduces itself into one of transmission or propa- gation from a diseased to a healthy person. The difference, in this point of view, between infection and contagion is one of de- gree, and not of kind ; and there are cases of morbid impression, which it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to refer either to the one or to the other, so imperceptibly do they glide inta each other. It is natural, however, to conclude that, as the genus includes the species, so a disease that is first produced by the action of a specific infectious agent on the animal economy, must be directly transmissible from a person diseased to a person in health. To argue at any length in favour of the transmission of typhus, whether through the medium of the atmosphere, or by the direct inhalation of the morbific matter from a person labouring under its effects, would be a waste of time. It is admitted all but universally. The fearful rapidity with which it extends its ra- vages ; the great number of cases in which patients refer their com- plaint to living with, or attending others affected with it; the all but universal occuiTcnce of the disease in nurses and resident medical attendants, put beyond a doubt the communication of the disease. Lassis, shortly after publishing his ingenious work, Recherches sur les Veritables Causes de Typhus, ou de la Non-contagion des Maladies Typhoides, fell a victim to the contagion, the existence of which he denied. Need I further refer for-the proof of this po- sition to the names of Sydenham, Morton, Pringle, Huxham, Hil- denbrand, Chomel,Tweedie, Roupell, Gauthierde Claubry, Mont- ault, Lombard, indeed to almost all the writers on the subject ? The facts stated by Tweedie, from p. 85 to p. 99 of his treatise, by Gauthier de Claubry, (p. 100 to 114), and by Dr West in his able paper on Exanthematic Typhus, in the fiftieth volume of the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical .Journal, are conclusive as to the communication of typhus to medical attendants, nurses, and pa- tients labouring under other complaints, and they are completely borne out by my own experience. It is well known, that, for many years past, every resident clerk in the Glasgow Infirmary, witli very rare exceptions, many students who frequented the fever