The 1830 New Year's gift to the world : in a short treatise on ... the small pox virus, wherein it is proved to be ... harmless and beneficial, if judiciously treated with practical evidences of the all-sufficiency of Morison's 'Vegetable universal medicine' / [Thomas Moat].

  • Moat, Thomas
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The 1830 New Year's gift to the world : in a short treatise on ... the small pox virus, wherein it is proved to be ... harmless and beneficial, if judiciously treated with practical evidences of the all-sufficiency of Morison's 'Vegetable universal medicine' / [Thomas Moat]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bo infected, and labour under the horrors of that desolating complaint. Now we know that this is not the case : for there are not two in a hundred who do fail under its baneful influence: from whence arises the conviction that the influence of this effluvia is not universal, or general, but altogether partially directed by an attractive principle of the subtle humourous fluid pre-existing in the children who receive the impression ; therefore, the effluvia is not the cause of the complaint, but the medium, or instrument, through which the effect is produced ;— from whence arises the visible action in which the subtle matter had been struggling from birth for a vent, a necessary inflic¬ tion of human suffering, for the purpose of throwing out the infantine humours, the first fruits of parentihe impurities, and from whence it may be determined that the small pox humour is only injurious through the ignorance or maltreat¬ ment of our parents, or the doctors, who ought to be the Conser¬ vators of the public health ; and that this first effort of nature to throw off our inherent, or juvenile humours, in the disease called Small Pox, is, as far as the intention goes, a blessing, and highly beneficial, if duly attended to, and, pro perly and judiciously treated in the only rational prinip/e, of cleansing the frame with a vegetable purgative. Determining, then (as we must, if we will use our reasoning faculties), that the noxious small pox effluvia exists not in the air, independently of the sympathetic, attractive humour pre-existing in the afflicted by its influence, we must come to some comprehensive understanding of the nature and source of this disease ; and endeavour, on some rational principle, to find an antidote, or, at least, some mode, if possible, of ameliorating its baneful influence, and thus render it, in future, not only not injurious, but, perfectly harmless, and even beneficial.