The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions ; to which is now added, an essay on morbid sensibility of the stomach and bowels, as the proximate cause, or characteristic condition of indigestion, nervous irritability, mental despondency, hypochondriasis, &c. &c. preceded by observations on the diseases and regimen of invalids, on their return from hot and unhealthy climates / by James Johnson.

  • Johnson, James, 1777-1845.
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions ; to which is now added, an essay on morbid sensibility of the stomach and bowels, as the proximate cause, or characteristic condition of indigestion, nervous irritability, mental despondency, hypochondriasis, &c. &c. preceded by observations on the diseases and regimen of invalids, on their return from hot and unhealthy climates / by James Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    tury before the Christian era, describes an epidemic arising from noxious exhalations in Illyria. The inhabitants of the stricken district fled from their habitations carrying the disease with them, and were refused admittance in healthy situations, for fear of their communicating the pestilence. From this time till nearly 200 years after the Christian era, there is a hiatus in regard to contagion. Dio Cassius then relates the visitation of a pestilence at Rome, which was of singular fatality. But what is most to the point is the record of a diabolical practice then pursued— namely, the destruction of people in various and even distant parts of the Roman empire, by means of pricks from needles dipped in the pestilential poison. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, A.D. 340, describes a plague in Alexandria, where the Christians, through humanity, performed kindly offices among the sick, and were often, in consequence, smitten with the epidemic; whereas the Gentiles, from terror of the contagion, abandoned the sick, or even thrust them out of doors !* Father Gregory of Nyssa, was, in his day, the archetype of Dr. Maclean himself—though of a very different stamp. He was a vehement anti-contagionist, and exhorted his flock not to be- lieve in the communicability of pestilential diseases. His doc- trines had a humane and benevolent object in view. They did honour to his heart, at least, though probably not to his head. At all events they prove the belief in contagion at that time, just as unequivocally as the volumes of Dr. Maclean would prove the present belief, should they be turned up some fifteen hundred years hence by another contagionist or anti-contagionist. Five centuries and a half after the birth of Christ, a terrific pestilence scourged almost the whole of the then known surface of the habitable globe. Nobody, now-a-days, would imagine that such an epidemic could arise from contagion;—but few sensible or observant physicians could entertain any doubt that innume- rable sources of contagion must have been formed during the pre- valence of such universal sickness. Hence we cannot wonder that two historians, Evagrius and Procopius, should have main- tained diametrically opposite opinions—one, that the disease was contagious—the other, that it was destitute of any such charac- ter. They had, both of them, materials and grounds for their opinions. Both of them were ultras, or exclusionists—and both * We may here remark, once for all, that we do not bring forward Dr. Marx’s researches as proofs of actual contagion, but of the belief in its exist- ence among the Ancients—a fact denied in the strongest language by Maclean and his disciples. The Gentiles may have been wrong in their opinions, and certainly they were most culpable in their conduct; but the record of their in- humanity is a proof of their credence in the doctrine of contagion.