Notes and observations upon the contagion of typhous fever and contagion generally / by William Fergusson.

  • Fergusson, William.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes and observations upon the contagion of typhous fever and contagion generally / by William Fergusson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    observations upon the contagion of typhous fever and contagion generally. Could we establish the point, that this febrile contagion, un¬ like the poisonous leaven of the variolous fluid, or the venomous fluid of the viper’s tooth, which on the reception of a particle con¬ taminates the whole mass, is an infection of accumulation and quantity alone, we shall have attained a degree of security of nearly equal importance to mankind as the discovery of inoculation or the vaccine preventive itself. If such aresult is obtained, then, instead of man constantly generating a poison which would eventually be fatal to his race, the typhoid virus, without any great stretch of fancy, may almost be taken for the monitor of his life, and preserver of his existence in its due integrity ; because that ac¬ cumulation and quantity, to the degree that can constitute a contagion, being incompatible with the wholesome decencies of life, ought to And no toleration in civilized communities, and may always be obviated by the simplest precautions of domes¬ tic police. When these are neglected the powers of mind and body bestowed by the Creator languish, and are deteriorated, like unhealthy plants deprived of their nourishment in a deficient soil, or of the air and light necessary to their well being; for it has been wisely ordained, that man shall use his faculties to up¬ hold and improve the station that has been assigned to him ; and the behests of Providence can never be despised without incur¬ ring the appropriate penalty in the diseases that afflict him, and the various plagues that beset his life. It will be vain for him, and his rulers more especially, to plead contagion as a predica¬ ment from which they could not escape ; for that very contagion is part of their fault, being nine times in ten the work of their own creation, through default of humanity , and in consequence of their crimes. Wherever good government prevails, the worst contagion that ever appalled an hospital may be dissipated by the simple separation of the inmates; and the most saturated waking, I understand, never begins till the corpse is cold, and, in the recently dead from cholera, the heat is said not only to linger in, but actually to return to the body after death, (vide Lancet,) causing infection to rise from it (if any ever ex¬ isted) at the very time chosen for the ceremony of inhumation. Like the suicide and the worst of criminals, the dead were everywhere debarred the rights of sepul¬ ture in consecrated ground, to become, as invariably happened, the immediate booty of the body snatcher and the dissecting-rooms; and this cruel outrage upon the feelings of the dying, and grosser violation of the rights of the living, was, if not encouraged, too seldom opposed, as it ought to have been, by the medical profes¬ sion. In politics, it has often been reckoned good to frighten the people; and de¬ spotic power has ever found its best ally in superstitious fear. But medical science ou«ht to spurn the base connextion, and should never have been seen in the ranks of time-serving panic and superstition. To have aided in such a delusion can ad¬ mit of no excuse ; for its abettors, before they consented, must have forgotten, if they did not wilfully shut their eyes on the evidence of every dissecting-room in Europe, which have never become receptacles of contagion, with the exception of, I believe, the small-pox, nor have their purveyors, the resurrection men, ever fallen the vic¬ tims of their nefarious trade.