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.

    23/188 (page 13)
    / INTRODUCTION. 13 The evidence however of the existence of infection about the persons, bedding, and cloth¬ ing of those who are affected with common fever, appears to me incontrovertible. Even those who deny the production of a specific contagious matter, as in the case of small-pox, measles, and scarlet fever, nevertheless admit that the morbid exhalations and secretions, accumulating about the persons and coverings superstitions of any nation, previous to the middle of the sixteenth century.” Nay more, that u it was first in¬ vented, and propagated for a political purpose, by pope Paul III. in the years 1546 &c.” And these truths, we are told, are the result of “ his researches”! With respect to thefirst position, as it is entirely unsup¬ ported by historical evidence, and is probably credited by no other individual save Dr. Maclean, I conceive it altoge¬ ther unnecessary to attempt any refutation of such an opi¬ nion. But I must acknowledge my surprise, that any phy¬ sician should advance assertions, as the result of his learned researches, which a schoolboy might refute. I shall con¬ tent myself with noticing the following passages, in proof of the existence of the notion of contagion both among the poets and the historians of ancient R,ome. Livy, in more places than one, speaks distinctly of contagion; he even states a particular epidemic to have been local in its origin, but to have become contagious afterwards. “ Et primo temporis ac loci vitio,et segri erant, et moriebantur : postea curatio ipsa et contact as cegrorum vulgabat morbos!” cap. xxvi. The same historian, describing a pestilence early in the fourth century, U. C., says, vulgatlque con-