Consumption in New England and elsewhere, or soil-moisture one of its chief causes / [H.I. Bowditch].

  • Bowditch, Henry I. (Henry Ingersoll), 1808-1892.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consumption in New England and elsewhere, or soil-moisture one of its chief causes / [H.I. Bowditch]. 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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    B. By the Medical Opinion of Massachusetts as embodied in returns made to me (as a Committee of the Massachusetts Medical Society), from physicians resident in all the towns of the State, one hundred and eighty-three of whom give specific details bearing upon the subject: C. By actual statistics of deaths received from such correspondents—the statistics being generally given before either my correspondents or I were aware of the prevalence of any law upon the subject, or in fact that there was any really unequal distribution of consumption within the limits of the State: D. By peculiarities of certain towns where consumption is either prevalent or of rare occurrence, such differences being most clearly connected with corresponding differences of soil-moisture: E. From statistics, sometimes reaching over half a cen- tury, in regard to families successively inhabiting certain well-known houses in Maine and Massachusetts—rather popularly celebrated as containing many consumptive pa- tients ; whole families having been, at times, cut down by the disease, while the reason for such mortality has never been suspected until after these investigations were com- pleted : F. By confirmatory facts and statistics from the sister , States of Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, indicating that the same law exists over New England generally. 6r. From medical statistics from the United States Army Reports, strongly supporting the possibility of the prevalence of the same law over the whole territory of the United States.* H. From the results of my own medical practice since being convinced of the truth of the law; which results prove that persons, having only the early signs of phthisis, viz., haemoptysis, cough, &c., and general prostration, and without marked physical signs, have decidedly improved and finally recovered after moving from wet localities to well-selected dry ones; that persons having well-marked crackling under the clavicle, &c., with the rational signs of phthisis, have at times rapidly improved, and have at length recovered wholly * Dr. Coolidge's Report, cited above.