Corona

“ Krakatoa) , are also explicable by the diffraction of light. (See Dust.)
See E. Mascart, Traité d’optique (1899–1903) ; J. Pernter, Meteorologische Optik (1902–1905) .
In architecture, the term “corona” is used of that part of a cornice which projects over the bed mould and constitutes the chief protection to the wall from rain; it is always throated, and its soffit rises towards the wall. ”

“ Talking to day with the guardiano, he happened to mention that he had been three years in Quarantine, keeping watch over infected travellers. "What!" said I, "you have been sick three years." "Oh no," he replied; "I have never been sick at all." "But are not people sick in Quarantine?" "Stafferillah!" he exclaimed; "they are always in better health than the people outside." "What is Quarantine for, then?" ”

“ And oh, the crowded national school! where so many children's epidemics have their origin, what a tale its air-test would tell! We should have parents saying, and saying rightly, "I will not send my child to that school, the air-test stands at 'Horrid.'" And the dormitories of our great boarding schools! Scarlet fever would be no more ascribed to contagion, but to its right cause, the air-test standing at "Foul."
We should hear no longer of "Mysterious Dispensations," and of "Plague and Pestilence," being "in God's hands," when, so far as we know, He has put them into our own. ”

“ General Manner of Spread in Individual Localities. Having discussed the mode of propagation of influenza among individuals we will follow the disease as it attacks one person after another in a community and study the epidemiologic picture, drawn no longer with the individual as a unit, but with the community as the unit.
We must here distinguish between a primary epidemic, the first wave of a progressing pandemic, and the secondary type in which may be grouped those large or small recurrences which light up for a period of one to three or more years after the primary wave. ”

“ To realise the horror of the Plague, let us imagine an epidemic as contagious and as infectious as influenza was some few years ago spreading everywhere, the great majority of its victims dying in the most terrible sufferings. ”

“ May God comfort that torn up Southern home, and all the homes of this country, and of all the world, which have been swept by this plague of influenza, which has deepened sometimes into pneumonia and sometimes into typhus, and the victims of which are counted by the ten thousand, Satan, who is the “prince of the power of the air,” has been poisoning the atmosphere in all nations. ”

“ It is true, that as several Physicians told my Lord Mayor, the Fury of the Contagion was such at some particular Times, and People sicken’d so fast, and died so soon, that it was impossible and indeed to no purpose to go about to enquire who was sick and who was well, or to shut them up with such Exactness, as the thing required; almost every House in a whole Street being infected, and in many Places every Person in some of the Houses ”

“ But they might as well have talk’d to the Air, for the People of London thought themselves so Plague-free now, that they were past all Admonitions; they seem’d to depend upon it, that the Air was restor’d, and that the Air was like a Man that had had the Small Pox, not capable of being infected again; this reviv’d that Notion, that the Infection was all in the Air, that there was no such thing as Contagion from the sick People to the Sound; and so strongly did this Whimsy prevail among People, that they run all together promiscuously, sick and well ”

“ The Progress of an Epidemic That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions: is a fact as firmly established by experience as that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere. ”

“ The Devonshire diffusion was like the spreading circles in a still pool. The spread of influenza was like the flying ripples on a broad surface of water. The spread of plague, on the occasions when it was universal, was like the massive rollers of the depths, the onward march of cholera from the East having, in our own times, illustrated afresh the same momentum. ”

“ On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag, denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the world, taint the air with the streamings of their fever-flag. ”

“ Every spot which the sick had touched, their breath, their clothes, spread the contagion; and, as in all other places, the attendants and friends who were either blind to their danger, or heroically despised it, fell a sacrifice to their sympathy. Even the eyes of the patient were considered a sources of contagion, which had the power of acting at a distance, whether on account of their unwonted lustre, or the distortion which they always suffer in plague, or whether in conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight was considered as the bearer of a demoniacal enchantment. ”

“ For in the present Case, when Infection has seized any Part of a Country, much greater Care ought to be taken, that no Seeds of the Contagion be conveyed about, than when the Distemper is at a great Distance: because a Bale of Goods, which shall have imbibed the Contagious Aura when pack’d up in Turky, or any remote Parts, when unpack’d here, may chance to meet with so healthful a Temperament of our Air, that it shall not do much hurt. ”

“ All we can say is, we know into what dwellings cholera and fever will not come, however 'epidemic' the year; we can put towns and districts into such a state that the epidemic, like the mediæval witch, is exorcised, so that it cannot come near them. ”

“ And now a cab drawn at a foot’s pace towards the great door of the hospital—to so many the jaws of death. A little crowd here even, to see the patient carried in by the two stout porters. A little crowd here, when it might be a case of fever or something else—infectious, contagious. But no; this is no fever case, but one for our skilled surgeons; for the poor lad is bleeding, bound up, and fainting. ”

“ This is not the result of any contagion, or violent sickness, or any special disease, for we have had none; we have no prevailing disease, and it is not naturally an unhealthy country by any means. There is here and there a locality where they, having neglected common sanitary rules, have perhaps suffered from chills and fever, or ague. Diseases of this kind, which are incident to hot climates, have been experienced where they have allowed water to stand in pools. ”

“ This epidemic Proteus is at once a great difficulty and a most instructive fact. It opens up the very old doctrine of “epidemic constitutions” of the air, which to many moderns savours of unscientific vagueness; and it brings us face to face with degrees or kinds of infectiveness which are, in matter of fact, more wonderful or more incomprehensible than the deadlier infections, such as the plague or Asiatic cholera. The most familiar instance of the kind is influenza. ”

“ At the present moment, when the subject of epidemics is attracting so much attention, it may be interesting to call attention to the more important diseases comprised under that head, and to point out some of the main facts connected with their origin and distribution. {422} The principal epidemic diseases, then, are: small-pox, scarlet-fever, measles, typhus, relapsing fever, Oriental plague, yellow fever, diarrhoea, typhoid or enteric fever, cholera, dysentery, ague and remittent fevers, influenza, the sweating sickness, and the dancing mania. ”

“ If we suppose the plague, or any other epidemic disease, to arise from some general cause, let that cause be contagion or any thing else, it ought to operate upon all who come within its sphere of action, as Dr. Mosely observes of infection. If experience shows that it does not, the argument will hold equally against a constitution of the atmosphere, putrid effluvia, heat, cold, or any thing else ”

“ That universal epidemic, or pandemic, is usually counted as one of the great historical waves of influenza; and in the annals of that wonderful disease it stands the first which was well recorded by competent foreign observers, including Ingrassias, Gesner, Rondelet, Riverius, Dodonaeus, and Foreest. The corresponding sickness in England in 1557 (still more severe in 1558) , which carried off many of the wealthiest men, and made so great an impression that it is noticed by Stow and Speed, has missed being noticed by English physicians, with a single exception, and that a casual one. ”

“ From this picture let us take a lesson, in case the impending epidemic should ever come to spread in the populous towns of England, and the cry of contagion be proclaimed in their streets. The very word will spread terror and dismay throughout the people, causing multitudes to be infected, who would otherwise, in all probability, have escaped an attack, and afterwards consign them to death in despair, when they find themselves the marked and fated victims of a new plague. ”

“ Epidemics of many kinds, typhus, ague, plague—all diseases which were caused more or less by bad air—devastated this land and Europe in those days with a horrible intensity, to which even the choleras of our times are mild. The back streets, the hospitals, the gaols, the barracks, the camps—every place in which any large number of persons congregated, were so many nests of pestilence, engendered by uncleanliness, which denied alike the water which was drunk and the air which was breathed ”

“ Diseases of the body break out here and there in the world at different periods, and other centres of population get warning, and by quarantine and strict sanitary measures, its spread, as in the case of cholera, is checked. ”

“ That impure air, want of light, crowding together unwashed numbers, &c., will by predisposition contribute to the production and aggravation of disease, as we observe to be the case [210] in jails, hospitals, and in camp, I can fully understand; but that epidemic diseases, such, for instance, as plague, yellow fever, or cholera, are ever propagated by contact—contagion, I, after twenty-five years’ residence in pestilential countries, have no reason to believe ”

“ Keeping it cheerful and healthy becomes burdensome, and a task that he neglects. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" men's minds become morbid; the body sympathises with the mind, and in its turn becomes predisposed to disease and Cholera, Dysentery or Fever becoming epidemic, may, in a few weeks, decimate the force. ”

“ Cases of illness occurring during the months of 1918 and 1919 in which influenza was epidemic and in which the patient remembers that he had the more definite symptoms, (fever, headache, backache, pain in the extremities, pneumonia) and in which he was sick at least three days and in bed at least one day, have been designated as “Yes.” The symptoms chosen are those most likely to be remembered. The individual frequently does not remember all. Statements of the absence of fever are often unreliable. ”

“ While the intricate and perplexing subjects of quarantine and plague police, will require for their elucidation, the energies of a peculiarly constructed and well disciplined mind, to concentrate the genuine lights into a focus, and to dissipate the many specious, but false appearances, with which the question of contagion has been distorted. ”

“ When any large proportion are down at once, the doctors call it an epidemic, and it is attributed to a “wave”—an epizootic or influenza wave, for example, according as the victims are horses or men (the poor animals depend upon the elevated race for their habits, and never have disease except these are unphysiological) ,—when, in fact, the so-called epidemic, whether it be10 scarlet or yellow fever, diphtheria, or what not, is the result chiefly of the uniformly bad living habits of our people and their consequent predisposition to sickness. ”

“ By Oscar Jewell Harvey.
═══════ EARLY in September, 1918, the United States was invaded by a scourge of highly infectious and fatal disease, which spread with rapidity throughout the country. It was pandemic in its nature, and partook of many of the characteristics of influenza, grip and pneumonia. No one seemed to know much about the disease or its treatment, and medical science and public health agencies were alike unprepared to cope with it. ”

“ Let it not be objected, that the introduction of the young to the sick room will expose them, unnecessarily, either to contagion or the breathing of bad air. For as to contagion, there is probably much less of it in the world than many suppose. But whether there is less or more danger, the best way to do, as the world is now situated, is, to inure ourselves, gradually, to disease. ”

“ When a disease—such as the small-pox or scarlatina—breaks out in one of those crowded houses, and in a densely populated neighbourhood, the consequences are frightful: the mortality is as rapid as that which follows the footsteps of the plague! ”

“ Preparing to meet an Epidemic.—If you sit all day in your great coat, muffled up to the eyes in a woollen comforter and with your feet in constantly replenished mustard and hot water, as you propose, you will certainly be prepared, when it makes its appearance, to encounter the attack of the Russian Epidemic Influenza, that you so much dread. ”

“ My Design in this Discourse being to propose what Measures I think most proper to defend the Nation against the Plague, and for this End to consider the Nature of Pestilential Contagion as far as is necessary to set forth the Reasonableness of the Precepts I shall lay down; before I proceed to any particular Directions, I shall enquire a little into the Causes, whence [Pg 2] the Plague arises, and by what Means the Infection of it is spread. ”