Extracts from an unpublished work on the importation and propagation of plague and other contagious diseases / by Dr Fergusson.

  • Fergusson William, Sir, 1808-1877.
Date:
[1843]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Extracts from an unpublished work on the importation and propagation of plague and other contagious diseases / by Dr Fergusson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    made its onward progress sure to the hitherto untouched quarters of the city. This is the case in true contagion; but what shall we say to a recent case, that of Asiatic cholera, where no actual con- tagion exists ; where the people, if they are to believe the health authorities, are thrown at once into a state ot mutual excommu- nication, every domestic tie set at nought, every social bond sever- ed, and men, at all other times social and humane, made as sel- fish and cruel as the inhabitants of Asliantee or New Zealand? Under the paramount instinct of self-preservation, the appeals ol reason and humanity will alike be given to the winds, and the ter- ror-struck fugitive of the pestilence will shut his doors as close as his heart against those who cry to him for succour;—and can all this hideous manifestation of cowardice and selfishness be the work of one man or department of men ? It can, if we are to believe the health-preservers. Cry contagion any where and it will happen to-morrow. When the Asiatic cholera prevailed, which is as much a contagion as the thunder storm, scenes were enacted through every quarter of Christian Europe which ought to make man ashamed of his species. In our own Christian country, shipwrecked sailors were stoned upon the beach, under suspicion that they came from infected countries; and wayfaring women, taken with the pains of labour, were thrust from the outhouses where they had sought shelter, and committed to the tender mercies of the public high- ways. * These are sad degrading histories ; but what shall we say to them if they were enacted in the case of an atmospherical visitation, against which they were as powerless as if they had been directed against the east wind ; but, even supposing true contagion to exist, would excommunication of the infected be the best way to miti- gate its terrors and bring about its extinction ; or would it not, on the contrary, give it tenfold force through the inevitable evils of accumulation and the terrors of desertion ? Fly the place, cer- tainly, and make all fly who have the means, but to those who * An instance of the first occurred at Kirkintulloch, in Scotland, and one of the last in Ayrshire, of which I was all but an eye-witness, as it happened in the neigh- bourhood of a family residence where I chanced at the time to be sojourning and I afterwards took an active part in the investigation of the atrocity. Be it remem- bered, moreover, that on both occasions the people concerned were at all other times the kindest-hearted in the world. On the Continent, whenever cholera appeared, the frenzy of the people was even more uncontrollable. Enlightened liberal France was as much possessed with the delusion as semibarbarous Russia. Poisoned wells poisoned bread, poisoned medicine, all found believers. The faculty, in some places', were sought to be massacred; in others, they were made to drink their own disin- fecting chlorines until they died from the chemical poison ; and really, when we consider that, in the first place, they were instrumental in converting Christian men into insane demons through the cry of contagion, we feel almost warranted in say- ing the persecution was not altogether undeserved. Let them from this never forget hereafter that, whenever they may succeed in lashing the people up into a similar wild panic, they will themselves, in all probability, be made the first victims.
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