An essay on the nature and treatment of the Indian pestilence, commonly called cholera / by Henry Penneck.

  • Penneck Henry.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the nature and treatment of the Indian pestilence, commonly called cholera / by Henry Penneck. 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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    munity at large, who will be the sufferers by the abandonment of the safe side, must determine whe- ther or not their lives shall be sacrificed to the views of the interested opponents of cordons and quarantines. The spreading of this pestilence in the way described, and its wide wasting devastation, whilst they sup- port the belief of its contagious nature, tend to con- firm another proposition in my Essay ; for the widest spreading and most mortal diseases have always be- longed to the family of fever. Ventilation and Cleanliness.^-The principal causes of the spread of contagion, appear to be a want of ventilation, of personal cleanliness, and of caution with regard to the use of clothes of the sick ; crowd- ing many persons together in close apartments, and a predisposition induced by meagre diet ; want of pro- per clothing; and, in short, whatever tends to debi- litate the body or sink the spirits*. To these may probably be added, causes over which we have no control, as certain states of the atmosphere. We may also remark the operation of other natural causes which oppose a check to the spread of contagion ; and though we have no means of producing such re- sults in the open air, yet, following the analogy in lazarettos, hospitals, and private apartments, we may institute processes which, to a certain extent, will have similar effects. Sir Gilbert Blane observes^, “ the difference of a dry and a moist air cannot be put in a more striking point of view than by the two fol- lowing facts :—the first is, that there is a periodical wind,on the coast of Africa, called the Harmattan, * The general instructions of the Board of Health are most appro- priate. f Observations on the Diseases of Seamen, 1799. E ,