William Black

“ From one fifth to one sixth of all the mortality in London, is from consumption; which is nearly double to that even of small pox. But consumption is a term too lax and indefinite. Into this gulph, no doubt, are thrown many febrile and slow hectick emaciations, from infancy to old age, in both sexes; and there are few diseases from acute and chronic sources, especially in their fatal termination, without emaciation. Consumptions and dropsies are the final wreck of a great variety of human maladies. ”

“ I do not observe so great a difference in the recovery, from either age or cause, as might be expected: there are cured and incurable, promiscuously at all ages; and from all the different causes, whether adventitious or hereditary. Even from hereditary insanity, they seem to recover nearly as well as from the less inherent causes: there are several instances of recovery when hereditary from the parents on both sides. In some, where the disease was entailed, it has made its first appearance in all the intervals from puberty to fifty years of age. ”

“ The earth is the cistern, and one principal fountain of another still grosser element. From the Sun’s heat, and from the successive streams of air and winds, a prodigious evaporation is carried on from the surface of the ocean, from the land, and from vegetables. ”

“ Neither of these noxious extremes of pestilential heat, nor of deadning blasts from boreal snow, could be long endured by the human species, were their bodies not protected and skreened by fences of nature or of art. Atmospheric heat, equal even to that of the human body, is felt intolerably scorching and suffocating. Every one also knows, by personal experience, that in different latitudes, and in summer and winter, the degrees of heat and cold, the duration, recurrence, and changes, are extremely variable. ”

“ Public records of births and mortality are now partly become the rules of political arithmetic: but unfortunately for politicians, calculators of annuities, and medical men, they are yet every where far too incorrect and incomplete. Registers of diseases and deaths in London are entrusted to old women, two of whom are nominated in each parish, and called Parish Searchers, and who consider, the ultimatum of their commission is merely to prevent private funerals and concealed murder. ”

“ No one whose curiosity for information has led him to these melancholy wrecks of human vanity, and to behold the yawning mouths of sepulchres, can reflect without pain and astonishment, on the manner in which between twenty and thirty thousand{428} corpses are annually crammed into various holes, corners, public thoroughfares, and churches of this city: a feeling mind must shudder at, and shrink from the description. ”

“ Mankind, exclusive of their original mould, as issued from the mint of the Creator, are afterwards diversified by climate, soil, diet, government, religion, association, occupation, and habit.
By Civilization, mankind are arranged and connected into an infinite series of descending and dependent links. In a state of nature there are few gradations in society ”

“ Armed with diseases, the grim King of Terrors appears in the most hideous aspect. Under all these predatory disguises and morbifick forms, I shall track him grappling with mankind, and with his tremendous scythe mowing down generations. ”

“ In every large metropolis, small pox is an annual epidemick. In country towns and open districts, its invasions are more distant; at uncertain intervals of some years, when numbers contiguous are attacked at the same time. In our climate, it is alledged to be most prevalent in spring and autumn. Very few of the human species escape the small pox, especially in populous cities and towns, wherein there is always lasting variolous fuel, or, lurking embers: a wooden horse with ferocious foes in ambuscade, tolerated within their walls, rioting in human slaughter, and infantile immolation. ”

“ Bills of Mortality, however defective and inaccurate, yet sufficiently demonstrate this awful truth, that very few of the human species die of old age, or natural decay: by far the greater proportion are prematurely cut off by diseases. Of all the animal tribe, who usually bring forth one at a birth, none die in such numbers, in infancy, as the human race. In London, Vienna, Berlin, and every other overgrown metropolis of Europe, on an average, one half of the children born, die under{39} three years of age. But in country towns and villages, the proportion of infant mortality greatly abates. ”

“ I propose therefore, in imitation of the geographers, to spread out and to review, in one general Chart, the enormous host of diseases which disgorge their virulence over the earth, and, with frightful rapacity, wage incessant hostilities with mankind. ”

“ A London infant at birth, has but an equal chance of living to three years old; whereas in the country, as before observed, half born survive to maturity. Upon reaching the third year, in cities, infants are somewhat seasoned, and the hurricane of puerile carnage is greatly abated. There is not afterwards such a prodigious disproportion between city and country mortality; and, in a few years after, from seven to ten, they approach nearer to an equality. From the London registers of burials, it appears that more die in the metropolis under two years of age, than from two to upwards of forty ”

“ The comparative growth of the fœtus infinitely surpasses that of its whole future existence. But the exact age of uterine embryos, and of abortives, is, in some degree, conjectural. Before the seventeenth day after conception, its rudiments are not even visible to the naked eye: the glary ovum has then slidden down from the ovarium, through one of the lateral tubes into the womb. The size of an abortion, comprehending the fœtus, its membranes, waters, and placenta, at the end of six weeks, does not exceed in size that of a pigeon’s or hen’s, and in three months, a goose’s egg. ”

“ Cities, associated communities, and towns, during the religious frenzy of crusading, and after the termination of this epidemical distemper, were asylums from aristocratic tyranny; and when of moderate size, are seats of politeness, refinement, emulation, arts, and society; but when overgrown, they check population; they are drains of the human species, the graves of infants, and nurseries of vices. ”

“ Inflammation of the Lungs and Organs of Respiration, is a frequent inflammation in northern climates; and most so in spring, autumn, and winter; when the body, hydraulick canals, and blood are in a state of inflammatory diathesis: it generally encounters the robust vigorous constitution, those of strong muscular fibre, and dense rich blood; the athletick rustick, manufacturer, and artizan; those in the prime, and in all the intervals between twenty and the decline of life: it is very rare in infancy, as in idiopathick disease, and seldom under puberty, or in old age. ”

“ It would, in this disease, be ridiculous to inspect hospital registers, for the purpose of either ascertaining the ages wherein venereal ravages prevail, or the proportion of cured and incurable. Its ravages cannot be in infancy, nor in adolescence, nor in the decline of life. The merest smatterer in medicine knows the infallible remedy and cure I except that in the application to particular cases, some more judgment and dexterity is necessary. The multitudes who now perish in these battles of Venus, are so many sacrifices either to negligence or to indigence ”

“ From this main spring and soul of animated nature, blessings and bounties are diffused, in thousands of channels, to every order of the creation; and from its extremes and vicissitudes, a multitude of evils and diseases are inflicted upon man. ”

“ Of small pox, measles, scarlet fever, and sweating sickness, we are totally ignorant of their origin and essence. We, however, know to a certainty, and it is of infinitely more importance to the publick safety, that neither marshy miasma, nor those from human effluvia, spread to any considerable distance through the air. Even by the plague the atmosphere is tainted to a very inconsiderable distance; and mankind find an asylum and sanctuary within a few yards. ”

“ An enlarged Survey of Medicine is intimately interwoven with most of the sublime Objects, not only of Philosophy, but, in our original Chart and Model, of Politicks also and Legislation, both in Peace and War. It transcends the British Poet’s Limitation of Human Studies, the Knowledge of Man: it embraces a Scope of Natural Knowledge far beyond any other of the learned Professions ”

“ Anomalous, or complex labours, are either natural or preternatural: but at the same time are accompanied with uterine hemorrhage, with convulsions, or with two or more fœtuses; and to these some add the cases of instrumental delivery. It is natural and usual for the human species, and for all large animals, to bring forth one at a birth: twins often occur; tergemini are rare: four, or at least five, are not perhaps seen in some millions of births. Plurality of fœtuses are seldom attended with peculiar circumstances of danger. Twins do not occasion much difficulty: they are generally small ”

“ Vomiting of Blood, hematomosis, vomitus cruentus, is a very rare disease. It is said to be more frequent in females than males; and is an adult malady. The symptoms, weight, straitness, and anxiety at the region of the stomach; nausea, cardialgy, efforts to vomit, and discharge of blood without coughing: the colour depends upon the time it has lain in the stomach, and is with various intermixtures of food, bile, pituita: there is also great prostration of strength, and proneness to faint. The quantity of this extravasation is various, from ounces to pounds ”

“ Inflammation of the Womb begins generally between the fourth and ninth day after delivery, and commonly with retention of the lochia: with fever, heat, and pain about the uterine region, elevation and hardness of the abdomen below, with tenderness and acute sensibility on pressure, irritation to urine and stools, colick, intense headach, strong full pulse. The whole, or different parts only, of the womb may be inflamed, whence the contiguous viscera of the pelvis will be differently affected. Where the inflammation is not violent, the crisis is about the fourth or seventh day from the attack ”

“ We throw to one side all that specious romance and sapient pomposity, strutting in the tinsel robes of proximate causes, and merely attend to the predisponent and occasional. Because, after diving and climbing as assiduously as many of our fellow-labourers in search of those arcana, we experienced reiterated retrogradation; and, as in metaphysicks, error supplanted by error. Neither do we attempt to pry into those latent predispositions in the human organization, which renders them susceptible to many various febrile impressions. ”

“ Yet all are witnesses that good eating and gormandizing are not worn out of fashion in this metropolis. Medical men know that surfeits and intemperance are often merely predisposing or occasional causes of diseases: they may rouse latent disorders, or dispose the body to receive noxious impressions externally. The searches therefore formerly, as I suspect, made many of these reports from the ostensible cause which they imagined gave birth to the disease and mortality. ”

“ A neighbour barricading himself within his house, at a few yards distance from infection, may escape unhurt. If pestilential contagion could be so suddenly and widely scattered over a kingdom as epidemical influenza, the earth, in a few months, would be converted into an enormous church-yard. It is not like some other exotick poisons of the exanthematous order, after enduring which once, mankind are rendered{120} invulnerable: the plague, as well as putrid fever, may attack the same person repeatedly. ”

“ Voltaire makes two great divisions of mankind; the oppressors, and the oppressed. Descending the mole-hill and ladder from the throne to the cottage, we may trace a multitude of gradations in the scale of polished communities. We descend thro’{xxiii} nobility and gentry of independent fortunes, in lands or money; through literary professions, including divinity, medicine, law, and various other branches of active or speculative science: all of which united, constitute, even in the most opulent nations, but a small portion of the community. ”

“ The periodick and spasmodick is the true disease. Generally, the day preceding the paroxism there is fulness of the stomach, impaired appetite, flatulence, eructation, tightness, and stricture about the breast, and difficulty of respiration; sometimes dry cough; the diaphragm descends with difficulty in inspiration: these are all increased by wine, fires, bed, and heat: the head is stupid, heavy, with slight pain, drowsiness, languor, yawning, restlessness of spirits; profuse excretion of colourless urine. ”

“ The natural crisis is various by nasal hemorrhage, by sweats, turbid urine, diarrhœa; and the duration of the fever from four to eleven days. The Febris Diaria of a few days continuance, is a sort of minor or infant species, an appendix of the inflammatory: it begins suddenly with nausea, vomiting, shivering, cold, headach, lassitude, heat of the skin, flushed face, restlessness, or disturbed sleep, strong quick pulse: and is rarely dangerous. ”

“ The ancient Egyptians allotted 3 generations to a century, which is bordering upon the truth; at this day, 1 of 32 and 33 up to 35, is near the measure of a generation, and to the general decrease of a community throughout Europe, comprehending all the inhabitants in city, village, and country: that is, mankind share amongst them from about 32 and 33 to 35 years each of existence: and within this fugitive interval of time, a number equal to all the present inhabitants of this island, or of the whole earth, will be exterminated. ”