An Essay on Contagious Diseases: more particularly on the small-pox, measles, putrid, malignant, and pestilential fevers — John Shaqi
An Essay on Contagious Diseases: more particularly on the small-pox, measles, putrid, malignant, and pestilential feversWintringham, Clifton
History
An Essay on Contagious Diseases: more particularly on the small-pox, measles, putrid, malignant, and pestilential fevers
Wintringham, Clifton
Communicable diseases -- Early works to 1800; Fever -- Early works to 1800; Smallpox -- Early works to 1800
How unfit an Air stock'd with these kind of Particles is for
Respiration, appears from several of Mr. _Boyl_'s Experiments on
Animals, shut up with putrified Air in the Receiver, most of which with
incredible Inquietude die sooner than in _Vacuo_, as also from the
pernicious Effects of the Steams of Vaults, Mines, the _Grotto de Cane_,
and such like. But besides this Inaptitude of such Air to expand the
Pulmonary Vessels, these minute and pungent Particles may be considered
as so many _Stimuli_ or Lancets, acting upon and penetrating the Coats
of the Stomach, Lungs, and other Vessels. On which Account they are not
only capable of creating great Disordes, as Inflamation, Pain, Sickness,
Anxiety, Vomiting, _&c._ in the Stomach and Nervous Parts; But likewise
being carried immediately into the Blood, will there stimulate the
ultimate Vessels, ferment, dissolve, or coagulate the circulating Juices
according to the particular Qualities and Quantity of the Contagious
Particles. Nor is it unlikely, that from the various Action of the
Particles upon each other, and their different Combinations in a
stagnating Air, Particles may be formed of Qualities vastly differing
from, and in their Force almost infinitely exceeding those of their
Primogenial Salts and first Principles, as in Sublimate, some
Preparations of Antimony, _&c._ Instances of which those versed in
Chymistry are no Strangers to.
[Sidenote: _Infectious Particles how
produced._]
Now supposing the Blood Saturated with these kind of Particles, and a
Malignant Fever produced by their means, we all know that the Blood in
this State throws off vast Quantities of subtil and active Particles
thro' the Perspirable, Salival, and other Excretory Ducts of the Body,
which not only must load the adjoining Air with great Quantities of
them, and render it capable of producing more dismal Effects than the
preceeding, but also the Particles thus thrown off must be endued with a
more acrid and pungent Disposition than the former, inasmuch as they are
more subtily divided and attenuated by the Force of the Fever, than
those in the preceeding Disposition of the Air, where so powerful an
Agent was wanting, And consequently produce a Fever of a most infectious
and deleterious Nature; And especially when the Infection is taken
toward the latter end of the Disease, at which time the Saline Particles
will be more exalted and volatilised, as well as thrown off in greater
Quantities, and thereby made more capable of producing an infectious
Contagion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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