At the end of the year 1835, and the beginning of the year 1836 the scarlet fever prevailed in Edinburgh to a great extent; and although great traffic was constantly going on between that town and Tranent, by means of foot-passengers, numerous carts and coaches, passing to and fro, daily, still that distemper failed to make its appearance in the latter town till the 20th of January, the day on which the first case was noticed.
That case did not occur at the point where the greatest thoroughfare subsists, but at one, the most remote from it.
Typhus fever has been prevailing, to a great extent, in Edinburgh, for many weeks past, but that disease has failed to make its appearance in Tranent (ten miles distant), although the road is constantly crowded with carriages, with vast numbers of carts conveying coals from that village to the capital, and with passengers both on horse and foot. It has not made its appearance, although several of the inhabitants of Tranent have lately lost relatives who have died of that disease, both in Edinburgh and Leith; and although a woman just recovered from that distemper, and come from the Royal Infirmary, has taken up her abode in this village.
Small-pox appeared about six weeks ago, simultaneously in two very filthy localities in Tranent, and it has been confined to them, although the most free communication has subsisted with other parts of the village, and it has failed to spread to the hamlets and farm-steadings around, notwithstanding the relatives of some of those labouring under that disease have travelled through the country, seeking charity.
We propose to close this part of the work. Much has been said in order to prove the position, that the doctrine of atmospheric contagion gains no support from the actual character of disease, no countenance from the ungarbled history of its career.
Arguments in favour of our views might have been drawn from the fact, that diseases said to be propagated by contagion, do not manifest themselves in all parts of the globe to which the poison would be likely to be taken, as they undoubtedly would do, were they dependent on the operation of one single object, such as contagious matter; and also from the consideration that those diseases, with whose causes we are intimately acquainted, by reason of their immediate operation, or of their being otherwise obvious, such as inflammation and wounds, are never said to be dependent on such an agency; but it is feared in the endeavour to be explicit, we have already been tiresome.
CHAPTER V.
ON VITIATED AIR.
The question of air holding in solution, an animal contagious matter, eliminated in the body of a sick person, and capable of producing the same disease, when inhaled by another, has hitherto occupied our attention.
It is now our design to treat of vitiated air, that is, an atmosphere deprived of part of its more essential principle, viz. oxygen gas, or tainted with the admixture of effluvia or gaseous products, from putrefying animal bodies, both living and dead, and from corrupting vegetable matter.
It is one of the most common, and most widely spread causes, of the most virulent and widely prevalent diseases, to which humanity is subject.