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A PHYSICIAN'S MEMORANDA. 179
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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« When Lord Chief Justice Holt Was A You...
the results of the neglect , disease , debility and death , are daily attributed by shallow thinkers—or rather by persons who will not
, . think at all , —to a species of Providence which is identical with the _Parcse of ancient mythology .
The two diseases are each attributable to a distinct poison ; both occur again and again in the history of our species under
various names ; but though we may not have succeeded in unravelling every mystery connected with the poison . —though we have not
as yet succeeded in isolating * and bottling' it ? so to speak , —we know for a certainty that one ( that which breeds typhus , ) is produced
, wherever ill-fed , ill-clad , ill-washed human beings are crowded unduly in darkunventilated dwellings . Numerous circumstances
, may foster or retard the development of the poison in the individual ; but the poison never becomes sufficiently concentrated to
induce an epidemic unless a nidus , or nest , is prepared for it by the sloth or culpable neglect of man himself .
_TyjDhus never is an unaccountable and mysterious dispensation , but always a direct _jDunishment inflicted upon mankind for their
non-observance of the laws which it is their duty to study , and for the study of which we have been endowed with qualities that
raise us above the brute creation . The same remarks hold good in regard to the relation of _typhus—tyj 3 hoid fever . Here , however ,
though overcrowding and mal-nutrition may indirectly constitute elements in the production of the disease , they operate with less
force . It may be laid down as a rule , that typhoid fever is due to defective drainage , and to the impurity of the atmosphere
produced in our dwellings by this defect . It is not , therefore , a disease whichlike typhus , peculiarly belongs to the poorest of
, our urban populations ; but it occurs with nearly the same virulence in every rank of society . The sad memories of the past year
need but be appealed to , to remind our readers that more than one Royal _Hotise in Europe has felt the devastating effects of this
scourge . Dare we even smile at the folly of the Portuguese who mobbed the apothecaries of Lisbon because they were supposed
to have caused the death of their sovereign by deleterious drugs , when , in our favoured isle , boasting as it does of a special
acquaintance with sanitary laws , we allowed the destroyer to approach and to invade the precincts of our own royal demesnes !
What stronger warning , in our own case , could have been given , chief than the public production schoolsnot of an long ep idemic ago by of a foul typhoid drain fever followed in one soon of after our
, , by a severe and alarming epidemic of the same kind at Windsor ? Nowhere has the relation between this disease and the faulty
condition of house drainage been more clearly followed out than at Windsor . The science of medicine did all that could be done in
demonstrating the source of the evil ; but can it be said that there has not been a grievous neglect of duty somewhere , when we find , in
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A Physician's Memoranda. 179
A PHYSICIAN ' S MEMORANDA . 179
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1862, page 179, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051862/page/35/
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