A succinct account of the contagious fever of this country, exemplified in the epidemic now prevailing in London; with the appropriate method of treatment as practised in the House of Recovery. To which are added observations on the nature and properties of contagion. Tending to correct the popular notions on this subject, and pointing out the means of prevention / By Thomas Bateman.

  • Bateman, Thomas, 1778-1821.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A succinct account of the contagious fever of this country, exemplified in the epidemic now prevailing in London; with the appropriate method of treatment as practised in the House of Recovery. To which are added observations on the nature and properties of contagion. Tending to correct the popular notions on this subject, and pointing out the means of prevention / By Thomas Bateman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/188 (page 4)
    the putrid pestilential fevers of the preceding age have been succeeded by the milder forms of infectious fever, which we now witness. The one which I am about to describe, has arisen, like its predecessors, in a season of scarcity among that portion of the commu¬ nity who principally suffer under such a cala¬ mity, and whose situation and habits contri¬ bute to the nurture and propagation of the infection thus generated. That deficiency of nutriment is the prin¬ cipal source of epidemic fever *, and that the disease has also been described by Hoffmann (see Med. Rat. vol. ii. par. ii. cap. 9. sect, xvi.): and by Linnceus, under the title of Raphania. (Amoen. Academ. vol. vi.) For a more particular account of these epidemics, I beg to refer the reader to the articles ERGOT and IGNIS sacer in Dr. Rees’s Cyclopgedia. # If the vague and contradictory accounts given by au¬ thors, of the Sweating Sickness, are to be credited, this fatal epidemic, which committed dreadful ravages in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, appears to be an exception to this fact. For it is said to have raged in seasons not remarkable for scarcity, and to have affected principally persons of condition and in high health. It was, however, like all the other epidemics of Europe, a disease of autumn, subsiding on the approach of winter ; and has been surmised by some physicians to have origi¬ nated from unwholesome food (see Willan on Cutaneous