Pneumonia : its supposed connection, pathological and etiological, with autumnal fevers, including an enquiry into the existence and morbid agency of malaria / by R. La Roche.

  • La Roche, R. (René), 1795-1872.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pneumonia : its supposed connection, pathological and etiological, with autumnal fevers, including an enquiry into the existence and morbid agency of malaria / by R. La Roche. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    and corrupted waters from wMch exhaled noxious vapours, wMch remain in tlie lowBr part of the atmosphere.^ Hofiman, when treat- ing of the evil results of a moist atmosphere, says: The cause of alf these accidents is justly and properly traced to the atmosphere, rendered sluggish, heavy, and destitute of elasticity, by marsh efiauvia, Baglivi, whose work on the practice of physic was written about the close of the seventeenth century, remarks on this subject: The Roman air is likewise foul and unwholesome—not in all places, indeed, but those chiefly where houses are wanting, and the air is slow and unmoved; and, above all, in such places as lie upon the Tiber, or, like valleys, are hedged in by mountains, or are exposed to the exhalations that rise from old ruinous walls, vaults, and the rubbish of the ancient edifices. Hence, it is manifest that the quar- ter of the Circus Maximus, lying between the Palatine and Aventine, the Tiber and Ostiau Gate, is very unwholesome and pernicious.^ About the same period, Chirac, in describing the epidemic of malignant or yellow fever which prevailed at Rochefort in 1694, and was then designated under the name of plague, says of that place, that it is situated on the River Charente, and is sheltered from the north wind by a high hill and the remains of a thick wood. On the east side is situated a large meadow, which is almost annually overflowed by the river, and thereby converted into marshes filled with muddy and stinking water. These marshes dry up during the summer, and impart to the air of the port a smell of burnt powder, especially towards evening, when the dew begins to fall. To these exhalations—which he regards as always extremely dangerous—Chirac attributed the fever in question. This inference he considered natural, because he had before his eyes the results of observations made annually in all paludal countries, whose inha- bitants are scourged by malignant fevers, which there break out, I almost every summer, when the marshes are dried up, and the air becomes surcharged with the indigestible and offensive sulphurs I which exhale from the mud.^ By Porzio and others attention was called, about the same time or not long after, to the Hungarian fever. Finally, Lancisi, collecting all the facts and information already possessed, and adding many he himself had amassed during ' Oratio de afFectfis cpidcmici Leidensis causis naturalibus dicta, 1670. 12mo. ^ Opera Omnia: Venitiis, 1754, 81. TraiW des Fi&vres Malignes, &c. i. 31, 141, 147.