[426] At that time there was little systematic knowledge of military hygiene. Nearly two generations after, the experiences of Pringle, Donald Monro and Brocklesby in the campaigns of 1743-48 and 1758-63 in Germany and the Netherlands, yielded many valuable hints, some of which Virchow made use of in compiling his “Rules of Health for the Army in the Field,” in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. See his Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der öffentlichen Medicin und Seuchenlehre.
[427] Bde. Berlin, 1879, II. 193.
[428] Joseph Rogers, M.D. Essay on Epidemic Diseases. Dublin, 1734.
[429] In further illustration of the power of morbid effluvia, he says: “We see how small a portion of a putrid animal juice, taken into the blood by inoculation, like a most active leaven sets all in a ferment; and in a very short time brings the whole juices of a sound body into an equal state of corruption with itself,”—instancing war-typhus, plague from cadaveric corruption (according to Paré), the Oxford gaol fever, and “a later instance at Taunton not more than five or six years ago.”
[430] Dr Rogan of Strabane, in his Condition of the Middle and Lower Classes in the North of Ireland, 1819, was of a different opinion (p. 90): “No police regulations exist in Strabane to prevent the slaughtering of cattle in any part of the town. The butchers, therefore, most of whom live in the narrow streets near the shambles, have their slaughter-houses immediately behind their dwellings. The garbage is thrown into a large pit, which is generally cleaned but once in the year, at the season when the manure is required for planting potatoes, and at this time an offensive smell pervades the whole town, and is perceptible for a considerable distance around. The families exposed constantly to the effluvia arising from these heaps of putrid offal might have been expected to suffer severely from fever; but on the contrary, they were found to be much less liable to it than others in the same rank of life. This was no doubt owing to their living chiefly on animal food, and thus escaping the debility induced by deficient nourishment, which certainly had the chief share in creating a predisposition to the disease.”
[431] Bp. Nicholson to Archbp. of Canterbury, cited by Lecky (II. 216) from Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 6116.
[432] Cited by O’Rourke, History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847. Dublin, 1875, from pamphlet in the Halliday Collection of the Royal Irish Academy.
[433] See Boulter’s Letters to the English Ministers.
[434] Wakefield’s Ireland, II. 6, cited by Barker and Cheyne.
[435] John Rutty, M.D. Chronological History of the Weather and Seasons and prevailing Diseases in Dublin during Forty Years. London, 1770.