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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    In treating this deeply interesting subject, I strongly feel bow misplaced and unworthy would be any attempt at sophisti¬ cation of argument, or desire for victory, at the expence of truth ; but the truth is of so much importance, that I shall proceed even at the risk of being tedious to farther illustrative evidence and argument. That moist cold, when applied to the destitute under circum¬ stances of moral and physical depression, is, and ever must be, the endemial source of typhous fever, causing it to spring up spontaneously in tliis country with each revolving season, I have already shown. Should it be doubted, I may refer to the two extremes of the tropical regions, and those on the borders of the arctic circle. In the first it is never endemic, and cannot be called into existence under any circumstances but those of the most defective medical police ; and in the second, while sojourn¬ ing there, I found to my surprise that it was almost equally rare; but the cause was not altogether hidden. The Russian peasant, although inhabiting the most rigorous climate of Eu¬ rope, feels little of moist cold. The approach of winter is sud¬ den, and the ground is almost immediately bound up dry in frost. His habitation is close and ill-ventilated ; but he heats his stove night and day to an astonishing degree,—-to that de¬ gree with which humidity is incompatible, and no contagion can exist; and every Russian and Finnish peasant, however filthy in his clothing and person, invariably takes a vapour bath at least once a week during all seasons of the year. The Esqui¬ maux Indians,—those children of the arctic circle,—filthy even to a proverb, are said to know nothing of typhous fever. They live in their snow-built huts,—the driest of ail habitations,-—although heated to a high degree in the centre by a large lamp of whale oil, and know little or no disease till the advent of their short summer, when the melting of their fusible walls subjects them to pleurisies in as great a degree as the inhabitants of Europe.’* * Such, then, is the endemial (and irremediable in a great de¬ gree, because endemial,) source of typhous fever amongst us. That other fans et origo mail, undue accumulation of human effluvia, ought to be remediable at all times amongst civilized or constitutional ulcers, which, however‘forn}idable their ravages may be, are never in themselves contagious. It may, however, reconcile my readers to the above doc¬ trine, to state the fact that ulcers, devastating ulcers, have been seen in many parts of the world to be the substitute for endemic fever. Our army in St Domingo dur¬ ing the years 1796-7-8, abounded with such proofs ; and in some parts of the East Indies, where 1 have never been, I understand that examples of it were even more rife. * A reclaimed Esquimaux of the name of Zaccheus, who was hired to accompany the first northern expedition under Captain Parry, although cradled midst the Polar snows, could not stand the vicissitudes of an ordinary Edinburgh winter, but died of pneumonia in the Infirmary there during tire winter 1819-20,