A history of the epidemic fever which prevailed in Bristol during the years 1817, 1818, and 1819 : founded on reports.

  • Prichard, James Cowles, 1786-1848.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of the epidemic fever which prevailed in Bristol during the years 1817, 1818, and 1819 : founded on reports. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    portions of the earth’s surface, seems to evince the operation of similar causes. What less extensive influence, for example, can be conjectured to have occasioned the appearance of the yellow fever in certain seasons, over so large a part of the United States and West Indies? To what other cause are we to ascribe the fatal diffusion of this disease during the present year, through the West India islands, the Con- tinent of America, and the Spanish Pe- ninsula. For explaining such phenomena as these, it is not sufficient to trace an infected ship to a particular port, or to smell out a bog on a piece of marshy ground near some particular town. This remark applies, indeed, to those diseases which by some writers have been termed epidemic, in contradistinction to contagious maladies. But we have reason to believe that this distinction has been represented by medical theorists as wider than it really is. If indeed the doctrine of the spontaneous origin of continued fever be allowed, I do not know on what plea this disease can be refused a place among the disorders strictly termed epidemical.