Observations on the nature of malignant cholera, with a view to establish correct principles of its preventions and treatment : drawn up at the request of the Westminster Medical Society / by A. P. W. Philip.

  • Philip, Alexander Philip Wilson, 1770-1847.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the nature of malignant cholera, with a view to establish correct principles of its preventions and treatment : drawn up at the request of the Westminster Medical Society / by A. P. W. Philip. 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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    CHAP. II. OF THE CAUSES OF MALIGNANT CHOLERA, AND THE MEANS OF PREVENTION. I HAVE no intention of entering at leng-th into the disputed question of the contagious, or non-contagious nature of malignant cholera, but any man who, without preposses- sion, compares the history of the disease with the way in which it often spreads in families, and the circumstance of many who had made up their minds to its non-contagious nature, having been converted to the opposite opinion by their own observation of the disease, will not, I think, long hesitate which side to adopt. It is to be recollected, that here one positive is worth many negative facts. The most con- tagious disease is not always communicated. Some are in- capable of receiving the infection. This is even the case respecting small pox, measles, &c. Others are little dis- posed to it, and much less at one time than another. Vari- ous other cicumstances, some of which it is difficult to trace, influence the propagation of contagious diseases. The most decided typhus has sometimes shewn no tendency to spread. Sometimes, Dr. Lind observes, one man may be seized with the petechial or with the yellow fever, while the rest continue unaffected.'' Indefjendentl}'^ of all other considerations, the circum- stance of malignant cholera being a new disease, for it will now, I believe, be admitted that the attempts to prove its identity with any disease formerly known have failed, is sufficient perhaps to determine the question *. Whence * In the history of medicine we observe contagions diseases wliich had long prevailed suddenly disappearing, and others arising in their stead. But the facts preserved, concerning the production and disappearance of these diseases, throw no light on Ihc sources from which they arose. The leprosy of tiie Jews, and other species of leprosy which raged in Europe in tlic l2ih and 13th centuries, are scarcly now to be met with. We have a remarkable instance both of the produc- tion and disappearance of a contagious disease in the Ephemera Britannicaj or, as