Result of an inquiry whether cholera can be conveyed by human intercourse from an infected to a healthy locality, or, from an infected to a healthy person : that is, is cholera a contagious disease? / by David Macloughlin.

  • Macloughlin, David, 1786-1870.
Date:
MDCCCLVI [1856]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Result of an inquiry whether cholera can be conveyed by human intercourse from an infected to a healthy locality, or, from an infected to a healthy person : that is, is cholera a contagious disease? / by David Macloughlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    8/114 (page 4)
    I was in Paris in the outbreak there of the cholera in 1832, and I had extensive opportunities to study the disease, in the public hospitals, in the ambulances, and in an extensive private prac- tice. But, although my attention, and the atten- tion of friends who acted with me, was directed to the question whether the disease attacked suddenly by vomiting, spasms, etc., we could not discover a single case without its having been ushered in by a diarrhoea. In 1849, when the disease broke out here as an epidemic, I was placed in charge of the house-to-house visitors belonging to nine unions ; and I had nearly one hundred medical gentlemen acting with me. I met these gentlemen daily; and from the first their attention was directed to the inquiry whether cholera attacks suddenly an individual in perfect health, or whether the disease gives any, and what warning, of its approach. In this way 3,902 cases of cholera, which oc- curred in the above unions, were inquired into, and every one was found to have been preceded by a diarrhoea for a longer or shorter period; and a report of this result was made to the General Board of Health. See their Report on Cholera^ published in 1850 ; Appendix B., p. 105. In 1853, cholera having again broken out in this country and on the continent as an epidemic, and aware that neither in this country nor on the con- tinent had the disease been scientifically investi- gated, and that the profession still believed that cholera is a disease independent of, and a superfoc- tation upon, diarrhoea; in the interests of humanity