Cerebro spinal meningitis / by D.G. Thomas.

  • Thomas, D. G. (Daniel Golden), 1806-1880.
Date:
[1858]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cerebro spinal meningitis / by D.G. Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    civil population. In 1846-7, it prevailed in England and Ire- land. In March, 1848, it was epidemic in Alabama, Missouri and Arkansas About the same time it suddenly broke out in Sutton and Millbury, Massachusetts; and in several localities in central New-York in 1850-51. It made its appearance in El- mira, N. Y., during the warm weather of February, 1857, and prevailed during the two succeeding months extensively in the western and central parts of the State. Wherever it has prevailed in an epidemic form, it has been evident that an agent of uncommon power was sapping the foun- tains of life. Its usual ratio of mortality has been from seventy to eighty per cent. It is true that in some places the ratio has been less than seventy, while in other localities the mortality has been more than eighty per cent. The first nineteen cases, treated in Sutton, Massachusetts, all diedj thirteen cases in the French garrison at Doesia all died, and in the epidemic in Boon county, Missouri, five-sixths died. That it has its origin from malarious exhalations the follow- ing opinions and circumstances seem conclusive : M. Gausaud, who had an extensive field for observation, attributes the epi- demic in France to this cause. A report was made before the Academy of Medicine in Paris, by Dr. Gautliea, of the disease as it appeared in the military hospitals, in which he considers it analogous in character with typhoid affections and malignant fevers, depending on a degraded condition of the blood, as proved by the various lesions of the serous, and pasenchymatous struc- tures which so rapidly occur. Its ravages continued in Alabama during wet weather, when there was au unusual degree of mois- ture in the atmosphere, the wind most of this time in the south- west. In the spring of 1844 the Missouri river overflowed a large section in the county of Boon, depositing a layer of sand over a large growth of vegetable matter. During the next three years this section, covered with the deposit, was unusually healthy, while beyond its limits it was sickly. In 1848 this dis- ease appeared with fearful malignancy, but confined entirely to the country covered with the deposit from the river. In Ala- bama two hundred and forty cases occurred in low moist locali-