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![First edition copyright © 1965 by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.
Revised edition copyright © 2001 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
06 05 04 03 02 O1 ieeaster:
Saleaoyeei
For further information, please address:
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 44937
Indianapolis, IN 46244-0937
www.hackettpublishing.com
Cover design by Listenberger Design & Associates
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Descartes, René, 1596-1650.
[Essays. English. Selections]
Discourse on method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology /
Descartes ; translated, with an introduction, by PaulJ.Olscamp.—Rev. ed.
p- cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-87220-568-1 (cloth) —ISBN 0-87220-567-3 (paper)
1. Science—Early works to 1800. 2. Optics. 3. Meteorology.
4. Science—Methodology. 5. Geometry. I. Title
Q155 .D433 2001
500—dc21 00-053876
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/94649-250729215056-a6e7dc56/85/Discourse-on-Method-Optics-Geometry-and-Meteorology-Rene-Descartes-11-320.jpg)
![TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION Xiil
provide a metaphysical foundation for his physics. In a letter
to Mersenne in 1638 he remarks that demonstration—that
is, synthesis in physics—was impossible unless the principles
of physics could be metaphysically justified, and in another
letter to the same man in 1641 he states that “these six
meditations contain the entire foundations of my _phys-
iesioqee) eS
In 1640, also in a letter to Mersenne, he claims that he has
reduced the laws of physics dealing with extension to the
laws of mathematics, or more precisely, to the laws of solid
geometry; and he claims that as a result of this momentous
achievement, “the demonstration [of physics] is now possible.’’?
The Meditations must therefore provide the metaphysical just-
ification for the claim that the principles of physics dealing
with extended bodies are certainly true. Moreover, since these
principles will be the laws of solid geometry, Descartes must
have believed that he had discovered the secret of the ancient
geometers, analysis, and that he had used it successfully. Now
if the proofs of God’s existence in the Meditations are sound
and valid, then our clear and distinct perceptions are veridical,
and what we perceive clearly and distinctly are objects ex-
tended in length, breadth, and depth. But these are nothing
other than the objects of solid geometry, and Descartes thought
that he had reduced the laws of theoretical physics to the laws
of this science plus the laws of motion. It follows that in order
to gain knowledge of this world, all we would have to do was
to deduce from our self-evident perceptions necessarily true
statements about these objects of solid geometry and about
motion, in order to know the physical principles of the real
world.
But at least two things remain unclear at this point: one
is the exact nature of the analysis and synthesis used by
Descartes, and the other is the precise role of physical
experimentation in his method. In the second and fourth
parts of this Introduction, I shall speak at some length about
6 Adam and Tannery, II, 141.
7 Ibid., p. 268.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/94649-250729215056-a6e7dc56/85/Discourse-on-Method-Optics-Geometry-and-Meteorology-Rene-Descartes-20-320.jpg)
![Xiv TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
both of these problems. Here, however, it might be noted
that in most of the traditional interpretations of the Cartesian
method, the most important function of experimentation is
to attempt to bridge the gap between the a priori justifi-
cation and derivation of physical principles, and their actual
application in the real world. As we shall see, however, the
real significance of experimentation has thus been vastly
underrated, and the first step in re-evaluating it must be
a closer examination of analysis and syntheses.
II
Method consists in a set of rules or procedures for using
the natural capacities and operations of the mind correctly;
there are only two of these operations, which Descartes calls
“intuition” and “deduction.” Actually, they are so closely
related that it is perhaps difficult to conceive of them as two
operations at all, since deduction is distinguishable from
intuition only by the fact that it involves “a certain movement
or succession” and that “present evidence is not necessary
to [it], as it is to intuition, but rather, in a certain measure,
it derives its certainty from memory.” The first principles of
knowledge alone are known by intuition, and the conclusions
from them are known by deduction.§
The method for using these two faculties of the mind is
a very old one, invented by the Greek philosophers and
mathematicians; its two parts, analysis and synthesis, are
used for the discovery of truth and its demonstration, re-
spectively. Analysis is the way we discover truth and synthesis
is the way we demonstrate it; the traditional interpretations
of Descartes preserve this rigid separation between the two.
Analysis has often been called the inductive method, and
Aristotle gives Socrates credit for having invented it. It is
the means by which general principles or axioms are derived
from particular facts or sets of facts. Synthesis, or the axio-
8 Rules for the Direction of the mind, Rule Ill, Lafleur, p. 155.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/94649-250729215056-a6e7dc56/85/Discourse-on-Method-Optics-Geometry-and-Meteorology-Rene-Descartes-21-320.jpg)
Discourse on Method Optics Geometry and Meteorology Rene Descartes
- 1. Discourse on Method Optics Geometry and Meteorology Rene Descartes - PDF Download (2025) https://ebookultra.com/download/discourse-on-method-optics- geometry-and-meteorology-rene-descartes/ Visit ebookultra.com today to download the complete set of ebooks or textbooks
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- 5. Discourse on Method Optics Geometry and Meteorology Rene Descartes Digital Instant Download Author(s): Rene Descartes; Translated, with Introduction, by Paul J. Olscamp ISBN(s): 9780872205680, 0872205681 Edition: Revised File Details: PDF, 18.29 MB Year: 2001 Language: english
- 6. René Descartes Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology Revised Edition Translated, with Introduction, by Paul J. Olscamp
- 7. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2023 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/discourseonmethoO000desc_u6c9
- 8. René Descartes Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology
- 9. ov S9e S93] | 7 ah wien) Dberlisit rosseserth. ar. vohoiossl bits vanes) See >=
- 10. René Descartes Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology Translated, with an Introduction, by PAULJ.OLSCAMP Revised Edition Hackett Publishing Company Indianapolis / Cambridge
- 11. First edition copyright © 1965 by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Revised edition copyright © 2001 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 06 05 04 03 02 O1 ieeaster: Saleaoyeei For further information, please address: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, IN 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Cover design by Listenberger Design & Associates Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Descartes, René, 1596-1650. [Essays. English. Selections] Discourse on method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology / Descartes ; translated, with an introduction, by PaulJ.Olscamp.—Rev. ed. p- cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-87220-568-1 (cloth) —ISBN 0-87220-567-3 (paper) 1. Science—Early works to 1800. 2. Optics. 3. Meteorology. 4. Science—Methodology. 5. Geometry. I. Title Q155 .D433 2001 500—dc21 00-053876 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
- 12. CONTENTS Translator’s Preface Introduction Selected Bibliography Discourse on the Method for Rightly Directing One’s Reason And Searching for Truth in the Sciences First Part Second Part Third Part Fourth Part Fifth Part Sixth Part Optics First Discourse: Of Light Second Discourse: Of Refraction Third Discourse: Of the Eye FourthDiscourse: Of the Senses in General Fifth Discourse: Of the Images That Form on the Back of the Eye Sixth Discourse: Of Vision Seventh Discourse: Of the Means of Perfecting Vision Eighth Discourse: Of the Shapes That Transparent Bodies Must Have in Order to Divert Rays Through Refraction in Every Way That Is Useful to Sight : Ninth Discourse: The Description of Telescopes Tenth Discourse: Of the Method of Cutting Lenses Geometry First Book: Of Problems That Can Be Constructed Using Only Circles and Straight Lines Second Book: Of the Nature of Curved Lines Third Book: Of the Construction of Solid and Supersolid Problems 101 114 iar) 150 162 177 190 228
- 13. Vi CONTENTS Meteorology First Discourse: Of the Nature of Terrestrial Bodies Second Discourse: Of Vapors and Exhalations Third Discourse: Of Salt Fourth Discourse: Of Winds ~ Fifth Discourse: Of Clouds Sixth Discourse: Of Snow, Rain, and Hail Seventh Discourse: Of Storms, Lightning, and All Other Fires That Blaze in the Air Eighth Discourse: Of the Rainbow Ninth Discourse: Of the Color of Clouds, and the Circles or Coronas That We Sometimes See Around the Heavenly Bodies Tenth Discourse: Of the Apparition of Several Suns Original Index for the Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology 263 269 275 287 298 307 322 ay 346 252 362
- 14. / TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE But I have not been able to understand your objection concerning the title “Discourse on Method”; for I did not call it “Treatise on Method,” but “Discourse on Method,” which is the same as Preface or Advice concerning Method, in order to show that I do not intend to teach it, but only to speak about it. For as you can see from what I say ofit, it consists more in Practice than in Theory, and I called the trea- tises following the Discourse Essays in this Method, because I hold that the things that they contain could not have been discovered without the method, and that through them you can know its value. DESCARTES TO MERSENNE The first edition of this complete translation of the Cartesian works in science plus their Preface, the Discourse on Method, was published by the Library of Liberal Arts in 1965. So far as I know, it has remained the only complete translation of the Dioptrique and the Meteors in English, and the only place where one can find these works plus the Geometry and the Discourse in a single book in the exact format in which Descartes published them. As can be seen from the quotation above from his correspondence with Father Mersenne, Descartes intended the Discourse to be studied in con- junction with the other three works, for he believed that his method could not be understood except by studying it in practice. Thus, the Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology, as I have translated the titles of the scientific works, are intended to be studied as illustra- tions of how his method is to be used; it is clear that Descartes did not intend the Discourse to be studied in isolation from them. But contrary to his intentions, this is exactly the way the Discourse has been studied and taught for hundreds of years. When we do study all the works as Descartes intended, new light is shed on the Cartesian method, and on the similarities and dif- ferences between the way this archetypical rationalist and his em- piricist counterparts such as Newton viewed the scientific enter- prise. I have tried to sketch some of the implications of this in my Introduction, and though much has been written about Descartes and science in the thirty-six years since the original publication, I believe it is still accurate and informative.
- 15. Vill TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE The works in this book have all been translated from the Oeuvres de Descartes, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, the 1637 edi- tion. I have received a good deal of help in the preparation of the original translation, and of this new edition, and I hope those who have helped me will realize the depth of my gratitude. The original idea was given to me by Professor Emeritus Colin Murray Tur- bayne of the University of Rochester. Readers of his book The Myth of Metaphor will see that I owe a debt to him for the origin of my own ideas concerning the Cartesian method. Judge Gilles Matte re- viewed the original translation in detail, and Andrew Oldenquist and the late Wallace Anderson of Ohio State University gave me welcome suggestions for the Introduction. Several errors were made in the first translation. Many of these were discovered and sent to me by Professor Desmond Clarke, then of Albion College and now of the University of Cork, Ireland. The corrections have been made in this volume. Several mistakes were also made in the diagrams, which were, I think, introduced by a staff artist. This was pointed out to me by Professor William Cas- selman of the University of British Columbia. The reader will note that two editions of the Oeuvres de Descartes are listed in the Selected Bibliography. The J. Vrin edition, pub- lished in 1973, was of course not available when this translation was first published in 1965. I have assumed that the later edition is the more accurate with respect to the diagrams. The corrected diagrams are from that edition. Descartes’ original Index to the works appears in this volume, for the first time. The reader will note that in Descartes’ Index, the references to the Meteorology occur before the references to the Geometry, whereas in the text the Geometry precedes the Meteorology. The translation preserves Descartes’ organization. My colleagues at Western Washington University, Stuart Brock and Ned Marcosian, suggested that I contact Hackett Publishing Company about the possibility of reissuing the book with correc- tions. I am grateful to them, and to Hackett for thinking this worthwhile. Daniel Garber of the University of Chicago has also been a steadfast supporter of the project. Finally, I want to thank my sister, Linda Lou Pinnington, a life- long student of the French language, who reviewed the translation of Descartes’ Index to the works, and Dr. Ruth Pratt, who helped with editing the manuscript. The Selected Bibliography has been updated. Any errors are of course my responsibility.
- 16. TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION ix INTRODUCTION I In 1637 René Descartes published the Discourse on the Meth- od for Rightly Directing One’s Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences as an introduction to three other essays— the Geometry, the Optics, and the Meteorology—in which he intended to give an actual illustration of the method described in the Discourse. But at the time the three scientific treatises proved to be more interesting to the intellectual public, and the introduction was ignored. Ironically, history has completely reversed this sequence: today the Discourse is studied, and the works in science are not only ignored but virtually forgotten. If any attention at all is given to them, it usually takes the form of a posthumous bow to the inventor of analytic geometry; aside from this formality, modern scholars direct their notice for the most part to the method of doing philosophy and sci- ence described by Descartes in such works as the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, the Meditations, and, of course, the Discourse. But to study either Descartes’ method or its implementation in isolation from one another is contrary to his intention, and I believe that it is time for us to reconsider the Cartesian method in the light of what he did in the three works to which the Discourse is an introduction. One reason for doing this is that we have a different pic- ture of the intention and meaning of the Discourse when we consider it as an introduction to the three following works. Previous attempts to describe the Cartesian method have largely ignored Descartes’ actual works in science, and as a re- sult such traditional interpretations often come up with ver- sions of this method that are substantially different from the one he actually uses in his scientific work. Therefore, either the traditional versions are mistaken, or else Descartes did
- 17. x TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION something in practice other than what he said he was going to do. I shall try to show that the traditional versions are mis- taken, and that Descartes did do what he said he was going to do. I shall also try to describe exactly what method Descartes used, and how it is related to the methods of modern-day science. Descartes’ ostensible purpose was to achieve a system of philosophical truth through the use of reason, to develop a system of true statements that would assume nothing to be true which was not known to be so indubitably and self-evi- dently. He used the word “philosophy” in a much broader sense than we do now. In the prefatory letter to the Principles of Philosophy he says: Philosophy means the study of wisdom, and by wisdom we understand not only prudence in affairs but also a perfect knowledge of all things that man can know both for the conduct of his life and for the conservation of his health and the invention of all the arts.1 Within the study of human wisdom, therefore, were included not only metaphysics but natural philosophy—that is, physics— and all of the other sciences insofar as they are related to physics; for no discipline can be a science for Descartes unless it is related to physics in certain specifiable ways. One of the defining features of any science is a universally applicable way in which we can conduct our thought within its frame- work. Descartes calls this method of investigation and pro- cedure in the sciences the “Universal Mathematics.” In the fourth of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, he notes that “Mathematics” properly speaking means the same thing as “scientific study,” and he goes on to talk about what is studied in a mathematical investigation, and what may be so studied: But as I considered this more attentively, it finally became clear that only those subjects in which order or measure are considered are regarded as mathematical, and it makes 1 G@uvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. 13 vols. (Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1897-1913), IX, 2.
- 18. TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION xi no difference whether such measure is sought in numbers, or figures, or stars, or sounds, or any other object what- ever. It then follows that there must be a certain general science which explains everything which can be asked about order and measure, and which is concerned with special subject matter and that this very thing called “pure mathematics. .. .” 2 Philosophy, therefore, is certain knowledge attained through the use of pure mathematics. It should be evident that the key to understanding the Cartesian method is this method of investigation, and the way Descartes applied it, or thought it could be applied, in all fields of human endeavor. For it is through the use of this method that the principles of physics, and thus of all the other sciences, are discovered and justified. Descartes actually did try to apply his mathematical method in several fields, among them geometry, optics, and meteor- ology; he also tried to use it to discover the foundations of his physics. In this latter endeavor, which he calls his meta- physics, and which is exemplified by his Meditations of First Philosophy, he also describes his method as “analysis”: ... I have used in my Meditations only analysis. . . .8 and he distinguishes between analysis and synthesis.* It there- fore appears that the universal mathematics is primarily in- volved in analysis, which is the method of the discovery and justification of the principles of knowledge in all fields. It should not be thought, however, that analysis is exclusively confined to metaphysics, for Descartes uses it in all fields of investigation. Just as the geometers of old could claim that their theorems were true if and only if they knew that the principles from which they followed were true, so Descartes has been under- 2 Descartes, Philosophical Essays, tr. Laurence J. Lafleur, “The Library of Liberal Arts,” No. 99 (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1964), . 161. a 8“Reply to Objections II.” Philosophical Works of Descartes, tr. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955), II, 49. 4 Ibid.
- 19. xi TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION stood to believe that the same was true of his physics. This is a misleading interpretation of Descartes’ system, as I shall show; but in these first pages I am merely attempting to outline what a plausible first reading of Descartes would lead one to believe. Indeed, the sketch given in this first section is the usual interpretation ‘of the Cartesian system. Thus, physics could not be shown to be an organic part of human wisdom unless and until its principles could be known to be true. This is the cardinal place of intuition in the Cartesian system: the clear and distinct apprehension of propositions seen to be self-evidently true. Intuition occurs either after or concomitantly with analysis, and I shall say more of it later on. The other sciences are included in human wisdom or phi- losophy only insofar as their laws are deductively related to the principles of physics, and hence indirectly related to metaphysics, since it is the latter science through which the principles of physics are justified. But although Descartes often speaks as if the laws of phy- sics were directly deducible from metaphysics, he realized that such a priori proceedings could never give us knowledge of the actual applicability of physical laws to this particular world. At best, he thought that we could deduce all the physical laws applicable to any possible world, since through the use of analysis he believed that he could arrive at an intuitive knowledge of the simple natures of such components of any possible material world as extension and motion, and thence arrive at a knowledge of the general laws applicable to these in any universe.5 But the only way that it could be shown which of these laws are actually in force here is to guarantee the veracity of our perceptions of this world, and this Descartes tries to do by proving the existence of a good God who would not deceive us. (As we shall see, he also uses physical experimentation for this purpose.) God thus guaran- tees the objectivity of our clear and distinct perceptions of things. The six Meditations are the core of Descartes’ attempt to 5 Discourse on Method, V (pp. 35-36).
- 20. TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION Xiil provide a metaphysical foundation for his physics. In a letter to Mersenne in 1638 he remarks that demonstration—that is, synthesis in physics—was impossible unless the principles of physics could be metaphysically justified, and in another letter to the same man in 1641 he states that “these six meditations contain the entire foundations of my _phys- iesioqee) eS In 1640, also in a letter to Mersenne, he claims that he has reduced the laws of physics dealing with extension to the laws of mathematics, or more precisely, to the laws of solid geometry; and he claims that as a result of this momentous achievement, “the demonstration [of physics] is now possible.’’? The Meditations must therefore provide the metaphysical just- ification for the claim that the principles of physics dealing with extended bodies are certainly true. Moreover, since these principles will be the laws of solid geometry, Descartes must have believed that he had discovered the secret of the ancient geometers, analysis, and that he had used it successfully. Now if the proofs of God’s existence in the Meditations are sound and valid, then our clear and distinct perceptions are veridical, and what we perceive clearly and distinctly are objects ex- tended in length, breadth, and depth. But these are nothing other than the objects of solid geometry, and Descartes thought that he had reduced the laws of theoretical physics to the laws of this science plus the laws of motion. It follows that in order to gain knowledge of this world, all we would have to do was to deduce from our self-evident perceptions necessarily true statements about these objects of solid geometry and about motion, in order to know the physical principles of the real world. But at least two things remain unclear at this point: one is the exact nature of the analysis and synthesis used by Descartes, and the other is the precise role of physical experimentation in his method. In the second and fourth parts of this Introduction, I shall speak at some length about 6 Adam and Tannery, II, 141. 7 Ibid., p. 268.
- 21. Xiv TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION both of these problems. Here, however, it might be noted that in most of the traditional interpretations of the Cartesian method, the most important function of experimentation is to attempt to bridge the gap between the a priori justifi- cation and derivation of physical principles, and their actual application in the real world. As we shall see, however, the real significance of experimentation has thus been vastly underrated, and the first step in re-evaluating it must be a closer examination of analysis and syntheses. II Method consists in a set of rules or procedures for using the natural capacities and operations of the mind correctly; there are only two of these operations, which Descartes calls “intuition” and “deduction.” Actually, they are so closely related that it is perhaps difficult to conceive of them as two operations at all, since deduction is distinguishable from intuition only by the fact that it involves “a certain movement or succession” and that “present evidence is not necessary to [it], as it is to intuition, but rather, in a certain measure, it derives its certainty from memory.” The first principles of knowledge alone are known by intuition, and the conclusions from them are known by deduction.§ The method for using these two faculties of the mind is a very old one, invented by the Greek philosophers and mathematicians; its two parts, analysis and synthesis, are used for the discovery of truth and its demonstration, re- spectively. Analysis is the way we discover truth and synthesis is the way we demonstrate it; the traditional interpretations of Descartes preserve this rigid separation between the two. Analysis has often been called the inductive method, and Aristotle gives Socrates credit for having invented it. It is the means by which general principles or axioms are derived from particular facts or sets of facts. Synthesis, or the axio- 8 Rules for the Direction of the mind, Rule Ill, Lafleur, p. 155.
- 22. TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION XV matic method, is used to present or exhibit what has already been discovered or justified through analysis, by showing how what we have discovered is deducible from axioms or principles that are already known to be true in virtue of prior analysis. As we have seen, Descartes says that his Meditations are an illustration of the analytic part of the method, and much of his Principles of Philosophy is an example of the synthetic or deductive method. He also appends to his Reply to the Second Set of Objections® an illustration “in the synthetic style” of some of his arguments in the Meditations. Just prior to this example of the synthetic mode of argu- mentation, Descartes makes a statement about analysis and synthesis which is, I think, important enough to quote at length: there are two things that I distinguish in the geometrical mode of writing, viz. the order and the method of proof. The order consists merely in putting forward those things first that should be known without the aid of what comes subsequently, and arranging all other mat- ters so that their proof depends solely on what precedes them. I certainly tried to follow this order as accurately as-possible in my Meditations;. . . Further, the method of proof is two-fold, one being analytic, the other synthetic. Analysis shows the true way by which a thing was methodically discovered and derived, as it were effect from cause... Synthesis contrariwise employs an opposite procedure, one in which the search goes as it were from effect to cause (though often here the proof itself is from cause to effect to a greater extent than in the former case). It does indeed clearly demonstrate its conclusions, and it employs a long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems, so that if one of the conclusions that follow is denied, it may at once be shown to be con- tained in what has gone before. ... Yet this method... does not show the way in which the matter taught was discovered. It was this synthesis alone that the ancient Geometers 9 Haldane and Ross, II, 52-59.
- 23. Xvi TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION employed in their writings, not because they were wholly ignorant of the analytic method, but, in my opinion, because they set so high a value on it that they wished to keep it to themselves as an important secret.’° I have italicized certain portions of these quotations because their true significance is often overlooked. Thus, the method of proof contains both analysis and synthesis; analysis is how we discover and derive the explanation of a thing by show- ing how it is an effect of one certain cause rather than of another; since the search (not the proof) in synthesis goes “from effect to cause,” the search in analysis must go from cause to effect; the proof exhibits what has been discovered and derived ‘in synthetic style’ to show how conclusions are logically related to their principles or causes, but such proof does not show how the principles and their relations to their effects were discovered; if the proof is adequate, each statement in it will depend upon the truth of preceding statements in the proof. What I should like to emphasize is that synthesis is involved here in the search for truth as well as in its demonstration, a fact which has been largely overlooked by the traditional interpretations of Descartes. The vindication of principles demands that we know them to be true if we are going to claim indubitable truth for what follows from them, and the problem for analysis is how to achieve the certain knowledge that these principles are true. Plato said that in using analysis we treat our starting assumptions as hypotheses until we have intuitively grasped their truth. Descartes calls these assumptions “complex and obscure propositions” in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and there is evidence to suggest that these obscure propositions are identical with what he elsewhere calls “sup- positions” and “hypotheses.” Plato also used a metaphor to characterize the entire process of “analysis—intuition—synthe- sis,” and this was the metaphor of the stepped arch, in which intuition was the coping stone that held the two 10 “Reply to Objections II.” Haldane and Ross, II, 48-49. 11 Rule V. Lafleur, p. 163.
- 24. TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION Xvil sides of the arch, analysis and synthesis, together.!? Aristotle too, in the Nicomachean Ethics, spoke of this method in terms of a metaphor, which in his case was a race course, where the principles or archai were apprehended intui- tively at the halfway mark of the course. Plato, Aristotle, the ancient geometers, and Descartes realized that there could be no viable synthesis without analysis, and that both analysis and synthesis seemed to need intuition for their ultimate justification. Insofar as scientific knowledge is demonstrative, that is, synthetic, it follows that it must depend upon analysis and intuititon. Descartes gives us the method for using intuition and deduction in several works, the most important of which are the Rules for the Direction of the Mind and the Discourse on Method; in these works, the fifth, sixth, and twelfth rules and the second and sixth parts of the Discourse are the most important sources of information about how to use these faculties. Analysis, the process through which we use intuition and deduction to discover our principles, is re- garded by Descartes as far more important than synthesis. Speaking of it in a letter to Clerselier, he says: For it is certain that in order to discover the truth we should always start with particular notions, in order to arrive at general conceptions subsequently, though we may also in the reverse way, after having discovered the universals, deduce other particulars from them.!% This has usually been taken as additional support for the thesis that synthesis plays little or no part in analysis, and occurs only after analysis, in the method. ; It is also usually claimed that analysis justifies the prin- ciples of physics in two ways: it makes clear in a systematic manner how they are reached, and why they are asserted, that is, because they are clearly and distinctly seen to be true. The actual use of analysis in the Cartesian system begins in 12 Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962). 13 Haldane and Ross, II, 127.
- 25. XVill TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION the Meditations with the advent of methodological doubt, through which we reject for purposes of discovery every proposition which it is possible to doubt. Eventually, at the end of that part of analysis described in the Rules as the “descent,” we arrive at what is impossible to doubt, and these are what Descartes calls “simple natures,” or at other times, “simple propositions’; it is impossible to doubt these because they are clearly and distinctly known through in- tuition. Then, still using analysis, we “ascend” through a series of intuitions to the knowledge of such truths as the laws of motion. Another way of describing the journey is to say that we begin with complex and obscure propositions (Plato’s “‘hypotheses’”) and after having methodologically doubted them wherever possible, broken them down into their simple natures, and apprehended these in the light of “an unclouded and attentive mind,’ we come to know through a series of intuitions the principles, laws, causes, or universals which stand at their foundations—that is, we come to know their explanations. When this has happened, we have finished our analysis and are ready to demonstrate “in the synthetic style’ what we have discovered. Thus, we begin with complex and obscure propositions, and end up with complex but clear propositions. Ii Traditionally, then, the principles which underlie the sim- ple natures or propositions that are the final results of analysis are the first principles of synthesis. Euclid’s geometry is a tra- ditional and outstanding example of the synthetic method, wherein what is already known is demonstrated. Descartes was brief in his treatment of synthesis or demonstration; it is a pity that he did not give it more attention, for his neglect of synthesis is partially responsible for raising some very im- portant logical and philosophical hurdles, which many have felt to be insurmountable. For example, on some occasions he speaks of the final products of analysis as simple natures
- 26. Other documents randomly have different content
- 27. wind might carry them to distant regions, as the sand is carried from the coast of Africa into the track of the Brazilian packets, to such an extent as to make it uncomfortable to walk on deck. It is by no means, therefore, improbable that those errant seeds came from a foreign land, the native produce of other countries. Continuing my observations into the transit of seeds, I have found them to be the cause of shallow canals in England being full of heretofore unknown water-plants, to the extent of impeding navigation. It is mentioned in the “Kosmos” of Humboldt, that the dust resulting from eruptions of the volcanic mountains in South America was observed in Spain. But if currents of wind thus carry seeds and other matters hundreds of miles through the air, no one can be surprised that the aquatic plants above alluded to floated to England through the air, from Holland; these plants, new to the land of their accidental adoption, bring with them a new corresponding animal life; in due time they come to maturity and die, and now Nature steps in to take up the task, and complete her work; her process is simple in appearance, most complex in its results: a malarious air— malarious at least to man—appears, as it may be, for the first time in the district, ascribed by medical men to every cause but the true one. In their anxiety to discover a cause, they fix on some antiquated drain, or cesspool, or ditch, by the margins of which many generations of a stout peasantry had lived and died; or they dive into the pump-well, and triumphantly exhibit infusoria, not unlikely engaged at the very moment in purifying the water: it never seems to have occurred to them that ferments only appear in certain combinations of the air—under circumstances which only occasionally occur, and that (which is most lamentable to think of, as in the case of London and the Thames) the evil is most frequently of man’s creation.70 The operations of nature when left to herself never vary; they may always be calculated on, foretold, anticipated; on this assured and
- 28. irrefutable fact all science rests. It is only when man interferes and modifies the elements at work that nature seems to alter her processes; a disturbing agent has been thrust into the machinery, and the mischief it effects must either be counteracted or entirely overcome. So long as the Lake of Haarlem was a lake, or mere, so long were its banks healthy; but drain it partially, and you must be prepared for the result. There is no middle course; that which was once a lake or sea cannot be left in the condition of a putrid, imperfectly-drained, fermenting mass of mud, teeming with animal and vegetable life, and with a material for which oxygen is the natural ferment; it must be arrested by the hands which drained, or attempted to drain it, and converted into a healthy pasture-land or a wheat-field; if left to nature, centuries might elapse before that which was once a sea would become a healthy forest or natural meadow, during which period man, should he persist in residing on its banks, must undergo the penalty of his own want of knowledge.71 CONCLUSION. In the first chapters of this work I have endeavoured to trace briefly yet succinctly the history of opinion as to the nature of malaria, showing how, prior to the appearance of Macculloch, no one had given to the theory of malaria any definite form. In those which followed I have traced the history of his presumed discovery from the period of its first announcement to its distinct refutation by one of the ablest of statisticians, showing that, notwithstanding this refutation, the physician having, in fact, no other theory to fall back on, persisted in adopting the theory, and, as a natural result, continued to look for and to find in cesspools and ditches, lay-stalls and drains, that unknown and mysterious poison which they had been told by Macculloch was the cause of all diseases. Confounding
- 29. it with bad odours of all sorts, they sought for remedies in the destruction of bad odours; at times they sealed the sewers and cesspools hermetically and by law: now they opened up and ventilated the sewers and cesspools also by law;72 and lastly, on finding that they had poisoned the air of the metropolis, and that every experiment they made ended in the precisely opposite results to what they had foretold would happen, as a last resource they endeavour now so to dilute the refuse of living beings as to render it, if possible, inodorous at least. This experiment will also fail. Like true Englishmen, they would not let well alone; they would attempt to solve questions by main force, which science, aided by long and careful experience and observation, could alone effect. At last Liebig appeared, and gave to the whole question a new phasis and another basis; that basis rests on an appeal to the great laws of nature, and not on any researches into the occult, hidden, and mysterious laws regulating the building up and the constructing of the various forms of animal and vegetable life. In this grand work the vital force is in action, whereas the destructive processes by which she annihilates her own forms are strictly chemical; there science may be properly said to commence in respect of the great question I now consider; and uniting experience with observation, it seems to lead to the following conclusions, which, if legitimate, will probably stand their ground until overthrown or modified by the larger experience of succeeding ages. § 1. Seeing that putrescent, that is fermentable, bodies can and do exert so great an influence on organic compounds when dead (in the sense we consider them), it is not unreasonable to suppose that animal structures and fluids capable of being fermented, may undergo the same process, that is, fermentation, putrescence, and destruction, or decay, whilst forming a part of the living body. § 2. As no sane person doubts the harmony which can be shown to exist in all created beings, so it is probable, if not quite certain, that
- 30. the laws of decomposition must be as regular as the laws of composition; or, in other words, that as the organic matter is without a doubt the same throughout the living world, and as living bodies are built up or constructed agreeably to certain laws, so, undoubtedly, will they be decomposed by laws equally fixed and constant; invariable; and the nature of the material so decomposed will in no shape be affected by those specific differences which bestow on organic nature her beauteous and varied aspect. § 3. The final product, whether of composition or decomposition, must be the same in all respectively; the infusoria, as well as the gigantic whale and elephant, are composed, when living, of the same elementary tissues, and, when dead, decompose into elements the same in all. § 4. The presence of microscopic animalcules in putrifying substances is viewed by Liebig as accidental, and not essential to putrefaction or to fermentation; but even admitting this, it is certain that animalcules (infusoria) exist everywhere in inconceivable numbers; if water contains these putrescible substances, as it must always do, then the infusoria are also present in the water; let this water evaporate under the heat of the sun, and we have in a fermentable, that is, putrescible, condition countless myriads of infusoria wafted through the atmosphere, and in certain localities (Pontine Marshes, Sierra Leone, the Orinoco, &c.) forming almost a constant, if not a constituent, part of the atmosphere; they pass into living bodies by respiration: hence the hitherto inexplicable phenomena with regard to the influence of locality in the production of disease, whether derived from animal or vegetable remains. § 5. Thus these bodies cause disease, not as live matter, but as dead, fermentable, and putrescible. They are not found everywhere, nor are they everywhere liable to pass into fermentation, a certain degree of heat being necessary for the production of this condition. Their evil effects on human life are chiefly felt when man places
- 31. himself in a false position in regard to them. In pursuit of gain, national or individual, he seeks the deltas of the rivers of hot climates, plunges within the tropics, despising the maxims of the natives of those countries, encamps on or near putrescent marshes, hoping to escape destruction; prances in holiday costume across the Dobrudscha, as if he were on the Champs Elysées or the grassy slopes of Hyde Park, and having carried folly and contempt for the experience of others to its height, pays the sad penalty sure to be exacted by nature from all those who despise her warnings. These are my opinions, supported, I believe, by facts and figures, and to those who honour me with a perusal of the preceding chapters I beg leave to say, in the words of the ancient poet and satirist— Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti, si non—his utere mecum.
- 33. A P P E N D I X . To avoid overloading the text, I have thrown into the form of an Appendix several Notes more or less intimately connected with the great question considered in the body of the work. They may be read with or without any reference to the various headings they treat of. Note 1. By the deodorizing processes now in use, the ammonia, the most valuable constituent of manures, is destroyed; whilst by the flushing of sewers with an excessive quantity of water it is dissipated; hence the low value, or rather the absolute inutility of the sewage of large towns, as manure, when diluted with the surface drainage and other waters, excepting in the case of reclaiming waste lands, in order to convert them into meadows of so highly objectionable a character that no one can or will reside near them. The smell from such meadows is most abominable. Even in such cases an outfall must be provided for the surplus sewage waters, either into a river or into the sea, for the meadows to be irrigated require but little of it, and that only occasionally and during droughts. The fixing the ammonia is the great difficulty the agriculturist experiences in all questions respecting those manures which naturally contain or produce it. Its volatility is so great that it not only readily escapes into the air, but carries along with it, especially from waters, bodies at the moment in a state of slow combustion; or, in other words, ferments, capable of exciting fermentation in other fermentable bodies. It may even pass into the condition of caustic ammonia.73 In a well written pamphlet by Mr. Ward,74 the unhappy and fatal mistake of mixing the surface drainage with the sewage of London is clearly pointed out for the hundredth time, but the parties who planned the scheme will no more take notice of such facts than they did fifteen or twenty years ago, when they commenced their work of polluting the Thames and other rivers.
- 34. To Mr. Ward’s proposal of purifying the river and fertilizing the land by tubular drainage, there are, however, many serious objections. Note 2.—Habits of the wilde, in desert or uninhabited countries. It is known to sportsmen that in the neighbourhood of hills, partridges leave the low grounds at the approach of evening, and take themselves to the hilly or more elevated district. Nature has taught them a very curious fact in meteorology, namely, that on leaving the valley at night, and ascending the hill, the temperature of the air increases up to a certain elevation, and from that point upwards decreases. The game ascends to the point of highest temperature, and there remains for the evening. A friend informs me that whilst crossing the high range of mountains forming the watershed between the Grotevisch Rivière and the Zondag Rivière, in Southern Africa, he experienced as he ascended intense cold, with heavy dews in the valleys through which ran the sources of the Grotevisch Rivière, and these continued until he reached the base of the crowning heights. Here the party slept in a mud-hut belonging to a Dutch boer. During the ascent they saw no game; but on climbing about half way up the remaining steep before daybreak next morning, they reached a spot where all the large game had congregated. It was the point of greatest warmth, generally a few hundred feet above the plain, and below the summit of the mountain. From this point to the summit the cold was most intense, and snow lay on the high peaks of the mountains. When the shells of infusoria are driven about in the atmosphere they lose their carbonate of lime by the acid fermentation; and the membranous portions having the properties of coagulated albumen, and being also fermentable, may, by passing into the blood, become excitants of fermentation. This has been already fully explained in the text.75 Note 3.—Moss. In the Annales de Chimie, volume xxix. p. 225, mention is made that the walls of various towns which had been under water for several years having become exposed, from the effects of a dry summer and hot weather, became covered with vegetable matter, the decomposition of which infected the atmosphere, and caused great sickness in the environs, and particularly where buildings were situated in marshes in communication with the sea. The vegetation, in fact, was composed of lichens. On a recent visit to Bangor, in North Wales, I was struck with the nice firm turf which was in the garden; and upon inquiring of the gardener, he informed me that
- 35. the turf came from the seeds blown from the hills, and that it required great care on the part of the farmers to keep it under, or it would be exceedingly injurious to land and buildings if neglected. When it grows on walls it splits them by the capillary expansion of its roots between the bricks operated upon by damp hot weather. I have seen this lichen destroy the pillars of a gateway three feet thick. Mill-stones are made in Germany out of granite, by means of willow pegs being driven into holes thinly covered with water; this causes the willow to act by capillary expansion, forcing the mill-stones of the required size out of the rock. It is of the utmost importance that the nature of moss and lichen generally should be well studied before constructing sewers, &c., where vegetable matter exists near water. Was it by similar means that the ancient Egyptians and inhabitants of Arabia Petræa cut from the solid rock those vast blocks, in effecting which they do not seem to have availed themselves of any modern mechanical contrivances? The ferment, that is, the substances in a state of fermentation and capable of acting on all fermentable bodies, and especially on complex organic compounds, as the blood, exist at all times in the air, but are as a matter of course greatly influenced by a variety of circumstances as regards their effects on man and other animals. It is proved by indubitable evidence that this morbific matter is as capable of entering the system when minute particles of it are diffused in the atmosphere as when it is directly introduced into the blood vessels by a wound. When diffused in the air, these noxious particles are conveyed into the system through the thin and delicate walls of the air-vesicles of the lungs in the act of respiration. The mode in which the air-vesicles are formed and disposed is such as to give to the human lungs an almost incredible extent of absorbing surface, while at every point of this surface there is a vascular tube ready to receive any substance imbibed by it and to carry it at once into the current of the circulation. Thus in certain seasons boils and carbuncles prevail to an alarming extent, and surgeons dare not operate lest they should lose their patients from erysipelas and inflammations, running rapidly into putrescence. In large hospitals the poisonous air in all probability is constantly present, attacking those who have been previously weakened by disease or wounds, or loss of blood; in other words, all those in whom from any circumstance (as by the depression of the vital powers) the complex organic compounds are held loosely together, and are therefore prepared to ferment or to fall into putrescence. Note 4.—Anther.
- 36. This name is given in botany to the summit or top of the stamen containing the fertilizing fruit-producing dust. Pollen is the fecundating dust or fine substance, like flour, meal, or fine bran. Farina, contained in the anther of flowers and plants, which is dispersed on their stigma for impregnation, form a vegetable essence constituting the particular nature of a substance forming the flower existing in other plants of the same family or kind. Spore or sporule in botany is that product of flowerless plants which performs the function of seeds. These substances float in the atmosphere, and are the cause of the hay fever; and when they fall into water and are afterwards left upon mud they ferment, and being dried up by the sun they fly about with the spawn of animals. Should seeds fly about with the pollen or farina in a state of decay and full of carbonic acid, the oxygen of the atmosphere, so essential to human beings, is diminished, and the pollen or seeds are inhaled into the lungs, and are thus exposed to the action of oxygen whilst circulating with the blood. The result of an excess of carbon in the air is the growth of ferns on barren rocks, which ferns subsequently become coal. The same cause will always produce the same results. When vegetable matters rise from a large surface of earth or mud (as from the newly-drained forty thousand acres of the lake of Haarlem), there are no plants there to inhale the carbonic acid, and to give out oxygen; but those seeds being rotten or in a state of ferment, the oxygen for the decomposition is drawn from the atmosphere alone, and human beings who breathe this malaria have fever; the atmosphere is tainted: miasms of carbon with hydrogen gas (the lightest thing known) fly about, carrying them to points where sulphurous gases may find them a resting-place on mud and shallow waters: these give rise to fever, cholera, plague, and to all zymotic diseases. Note 5.—Algæ, or Sea-weeds of the Mediterranean Sea. These were examined by Doctor Derbes, Professor of Sciences, and Captain Solier, of Marseilles, and the result of their researches was published in the supplement of the Comtes Rendus of the Académie des Sciences, in answer to a prize essay proposed by the Academy in 1847. Nothing can exceed the botanical truthfulness of the memoir presented by these gentlemen to the Academy. After a careful examination of the substances resulting from the mass of decayed sea-weed in the
- 37. delta of the various rivers which flow into the Mediterranean Sea, they arrived at the conclusion that the product is the cause of fevers, by generating a malaria which the vital powers are unequal to meet. Thus the cholera existed at Marseilles in 1850; all knowledge of the extent of its destructive ravages was withheld from the public; and the truth of this is in some measure proved by the readiness with which the Board of Health recommend the quarantine of ten to fifteen days, when it was reported that the plague or cholera existed at Tripoli, Sicily, and Sardinia.— July, 1858. Note 6.—The Marseilles Board of Health and Quarantine. TO THE EDITOR OF THE “TIMES.” Challice. Sir,—The Board of Health of Marseilles are about to establish quarantine regulations of ten days’ and fifteen days’ duration at that port, because “a dreadful plague rages at Bengazzi, in Tripoli, and is extending along the coast to Alexandria.” Individuals are to be confined ten days, and in certain cases fifteen days. Letters are to be purified, &c., and some 1500 Piedmontese labourers are likely to be disturbed and thrown out of work if the proposed quarantine regulations are established. And so this is the sum total of sanitary experience for the last ten years! The French authorities saw all quarantine regulations broken down during the Crimean war; in fact, joined the British in abolishing a quarantine at Smyrna, at Galipoli, at Constantinople, at Sinope, at Samsoon, at Trebizonde, at Malta, and even at Marseilles, and indeed at all other ports and places used by the transports and by the armies in alliance. The armies certainly did not escape fever and cholera in their most terrible forms. The French, the British, and the Sardinians alike suffered, both in the field and in hospital, at the commencement. The British alone, however, by means of sanitary works and regulations, reduced cholera attacks to a minimum, and almost abolished fever. A few simple alterations to the sewers from the great hospitals on the Bosphorus and other places; ventilation—in many instances by simply breaking the top squares of windows; regular scavenging without and cleansing within the works of the hospitals, and the regular use of the lime-wash brush, emptied the hospital wards of fever patients. Surface cleansing at Balaklava, and regular scavenging both the shores and water of the harbour; covering the shallow graves with gravel and earth; scavenging the camp, and daily disinfecting all latrines, soon reduced the British army mortality below home or barrack life and service. The French neglected these things, or blundered in their execution, as the 5000
- 38. deaths per month in the hospitals on the Bosphorus, from hospital and camp fever alone, during the last three months of the war, testify. That certain diseases are contagious, such as scarlatina, measles, small-pox, &c., few will deny. That plague and cholera are equally contagious many doubt. Sanitary works and regulations of a very primitive and simple kind can certainly check the contagibility of cholera, as witness the experience in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Tynemouth, in London, in many other English towns and districts, and in the British hospitals and camps throughout the Crimean campaign. The lesson taught by experience ought to be this:—Let the Board of Health at Marseilles cleanse the town, cause all the foul rooms to be ventilated and lime-washed, disinfect the foul cesspools and sewage, and cut it off by “interception” from the harbour and docks, and they may bid defiance to plague from any quarter. It may be imported in silks, &c., but it will not spread. Let there be a sanitary staff for the harbour, and another for the town, armed with brooms, barrows, and lime-wash brushes, in place of sidearms and muskets, and persons may land at once to go about their business, and merchandize may be forwarded to its destination without fear of consequences. During periods of epidemics there can be cholera without dirt; improper food and mental and bodily exhaustion may bring on isolated cases; but to have cholera rampant there must be numbers of human beings fouling air, earth, and water, and habitually living contrary to known sanitary laws and entirely neglecting sanitary precautions. Civil Engineer. August 14, 1858. Note 7.—Mud, Water, and Air. The presence of water and a suitable temperature are indispensable conditions of the oxidizing process of decay, just as they are necessary to putrefaction and fermentation. The sides of ponds and ditches being covered by water during the winter months, in the spring the air becoming warmer and drier, the water diminishes, the decay of vegetable seeds, plants, and all woody fibres enter now into putrefaction, communicating the process to each other, and by the transmission of decomposition from one particle to another, a great number of plants give out various gases to the atmosphere while decaying upon mud, rise into the air, meeting other gases, and then, floating about, they compose and decompose each other. Hence the bad odour from the mud-banks of the Thames, near the outfalls of the sewage. Note 8.
- 39. I have known fevers cured by a change of the sleeping room from the south to the north aspect, and still more readily by removing from one side of the street to the other. All should avoid dwelling near canals, ponds, or ditches habitually covered with a white froth; this is formed, in fact, of gases rising through humus swimming on the water, and contains living beings as well as fermentable substances. It is important to men who work and sleep in the same house to have the day or working-rooms to the north, where the sun never enters, and to sleep in a room to the east or south. A room to the west, looking to the west, is not healthy, particularly in summer months, being the hottest in the evening. Gnats, moths, and flies collect there, and are at least harassing, if not hurtful, particularly to infants. No person not a native of a marshy country should travel overland in the evening; dew causes a strong action in vapours, mists, &c. Invalids and soldiers after fatigue, should halt in the daytime, and march in the evening, to avoid being chilled. Note 9. A sure remedy against the malaria of ditches, ponds, &c., is to fill the water- courses with water; never suffer them to be so far dried up that the spawn of living creatures may attach itself to the sides of grass, bushes, &c., and afterwards to dry and spread about like the seeds of flowers, in the environs. The mud which is left exposed to the air gives out, on drying, various gases, which being mixed with the fossils of the mud, contaminate the air, and are breathed by the people in the neighbourhood. A circular drain, having a double current, well understood by the hydraulic engineers of Holland, is the kind of drain I prefer. THE END. MR. RENSHAW’S PUBLICATIONS. A Treatise on Hooping Cough, with its Treatment by a New Remedy. By George D. Gibb, M.D. Fcap. cloth. Price 7s.
- 40. The Diseases of the Fœtus in Utero. By Henry Madge, M.D. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. Price 5s. On the Epidemic Fevers of Sierra Leone. By Alexander Bryson, M.D. 12mo. cloth. Price 4s. Froriep on the Application of Electro-Magnetism: translated by Dr. Lawrance. 8vo. cloth. Price 5s. On the Principles, Nature, and Treatment of Inflammation. Second Edition. By J. H. James. 8vo. cloth. Price 15s. On Inflammation of the Veins. By Henry Lee. 8vo. cloth. Price 6s. Laennec on Diseases of the Chest, and on Auscultation. Translated by J. Forbes, M.D. 8vo. boards. Price 18s. Outlines of Human Pathology. By Herbert Mayo, F.R.S. 8vo. cloth. Price 18s. A Treatise on Syphilis. By Herbert Mayo, F.R.S. 8vo. cloth. Price 5s. 6d. On Indigestion and its Consequences. By A. P. W. Philip, M.D. 8vo. boards. Price 6s. 6d. On the Laws of the Vital Functions. By A. P. W. Philip, M.D. 8vo. cloth. Price 12s. On the Nature of Sleep and Death. By A. P. W. Philip, M.D. 8vo. boards. Price 8s. On Minute Doses of Mercury. By A. P. W. Philip, M.D. Second Edition. 12mo. boards. Price 3s. 6d. A Treatise on the Obscure Affections of the Brain. By A. P. W. Philip, M.D. 12mo. cloth. Price 4s. On Mercury, Blue Pill and Calomel; their Use and Abuse. By G. G. Sigmond, M.D. Fcap. cloth. Price 4s. The Pharmacopœia of the Royal College of Physicians for 1851. Translated by a Physician. 24mo. sewed. Price 2s. 6d. On Varicose Veins and Varicose Ulcers. By T. W. Nunn. Post 8vo. cloth. Price 2s. 6d. Inflammation of the Breast, and Milk Abscess. By T. W. Nunn. Post 8vo. cloth. Price 2s. 6d.
- 41. Wiblin’s Student’s Guide to the Hospitals and Medical Institutions of Paris. 18mo. cloth. Price 3s. Automatic Mechanism as applied to the Construction of Artificial Limbs. By F. Gray. With Cases. 8vo. cloth. 7s. 6d. Bower’s Memoranda for Examination at the College of Surgeons. Third Edition. By M. W. Hilles. 32mo. sewed. 3s. 6d. Velpeau on Cancer of the Breast. Translated by Dr. Marsden. With Four coloured Plates. 8vo. cloth. Price 14s. On the Topography and Diseases of the Gulf of Guinea. By W. F. Daniell, M.D. 8vo. cloth. Price 10s. 6d. The Medical Portrait Gallery; containing Drs. Todd, Budd, E. and J. Forbes, Sir W. Ellis and E. Smith; Messrs. Fergusson, Skey, Paget, Hancock, Avery, South, Simon, Coulson, Martin, Busk, Luke, Gay, Cox, and Travers. India paper proofs, 5s. each. Two Shillings and Sixpence each. Fcap. sewed. The Ear in Health and Disease. Wood Engravings. Second Edition. By W. Harvey, F.R.C.S. The Oculist’s Vade-mecum, a complete Practical System of Ophthalmic Surgery. By the late John Walker, Surgeon. On Gout and Rheumatism, and the Curative Effects of Galvanism. By R. M. Lawrance, M.D. Hilles on Regional Anatomy, designed as a Guide to the principal Operations of Surgery. By M. W. Hilles. On the Diseases of London Residents, their Cause and Treatment, by M. W. Hilles. One Shilling each. Dr. Rigby’s Memoranda for Young Practitioners in Midwifery. Dr. Tanner’s Memoranda on Poisons, giving Symptoms and Treatment. Dr. Tanner’s Medical Formulæ, Reprinted from the “Manual of the Practice of Medicine.” Dr. Golding’s Synopsis of Percussion, Auscultation, and other Methods of Physical Diagnosis.
- 42. Dr. Golding’s Table of Urinary Deposits, with their Tests for Clinical Examination. Mr. Foote’s Ophthalmic Memoranda on the more Common Diseases of the Eye met with in Practice. Mr. Savage’s Anatomist. A Complete Description of the Muscles, Fasciæ, Arteries, Nerves, Brain, and Heart. Dr. Spillan’s Key; a Translation of Formulæ: with the common abbreviations, terms, and phrases used in prescriptions. Dr. Clay’s Observations on Utero-Gestation, correcting Opinions on Protracted Gestation. The Pharmacopœia of King’s College Hospital. Caley’s Tables of Chemical Analysis. FOOTNOTES: 1 Περι αερον, ὑδατων καὶ τοπων. Cary’s edition. Paris. 1806. 2 Medical authors of the highest repute are exceedingly vague in their ideas respecting the nature of malaria; nor will it ever be otherwise until the question be taken up by the strictly scientific. Thus, Sir John Forbes says, in his “Holiday:”—“As the unknown thing which we term malaria or miasma of marshes, under certain circumstances gives rise at one time to simple ague, at another to a fatal remittent fever, &c.; and produces at times a morbid enlargement of the spleen, at others diseases of the liver, &c.; so I can imagine that some other malaria, or unknown thing or influence of local origin, may be the cause of ordinary bronchocele, of goitre of the Alps, and also of cretinism.” From the 1st of August to December the author hunted and waded through the marshes of Belgium and Holland in quest of water-fowl; his impunity from fever may be in part ascribed to a hardy training in early life.
- 43. 3 Typhus, now subdivided into two—namely, the true typhus and typhoid fever. 4 Quetelet, “Sur l’Homme.” 5 The late Dr. Macculloch was a distinguished geologist in the employment of Government, representing in himself the department which has now swelled out into the Metropolitan School of Practical Geology, the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn-street, the geological department in connexion with the Ordnance, &c. &c. He resided mostly in London, and moved in the best circles. Though a strictly scientific man, he was a professor also of the conjectural art, having been educated as a medical man. Soon after publishing his first essays on malaria, thrown out as feelers to the profession and the public, he had his misgivings as to the safety of the course he was pursuing. To denounce open sewers, undrained streets, untrapped cesspools, and overflowing dead-wells, was clearly an attack on the proprietors of London houses; and he called one morning in great haste on a distinguished barrister, to consult him as to the possibility of a passage in one of his essays being construed into a ground for an action for libel! How changed now are the views of society in respect of all such matters. 6 See the admirable speech of Mr. Disraeli in his place in Parliament, on the condition of the Thames. 7 It is right to observe that the unpleasant odour from the Thames, which during the month of June and part of July of the present year so disturbed the olfactory nerves of the Londoners, ceased at once so soon as the Bill for the purification of the Thames passed both Houses of Parliament. What connexion this had with the causes of the odour, and how these odours were so opportunely called forth and so quietly dismissed, I leave to be conjectured by the thoughtful of all classes. At this moment— August, 1858—during the most intense heat, the river is as sweet and fresh as a mountain stream, and has continued so ever since. Some are disposed to ascribe the cessation of the odours (for the stream is not in any way purified) to the throwing of quick-lime into the lower sections of the principal sewers; but if a remedy so simple as this was to be found in such a process, why was it not employed in June and July? It is only the unobserving who are
- 44. surprised at such things, and who have not happened to observe what follows the spreading of an ancient cesspool over the fields by the road-side, or pouring its contents into a comparatively small river. The Thames is a comparatively small river, and the effects of pouring into it, at a convenient and suitable time (the dog-days, Parliament sitting, &c.), the contents of half-a-dozen cesspools of fifty years’ standing, undiluted and at once, would most assuredly give rise to results such as took place in London in June and July. The plot was a very nasty one—it might easily have been traced and the plotters detected: the sewer-makers, under the direction, no doubt, of the various boards, were very active in various quarters; and, not to mention other places, the main street of Hackney, for instance, for nearly a whole day, was by such means rendered quite unbearable. 8 The Walcheren expedition. 9 Rapid changes in the barometric pressure of the atmosphere strongly affect some persons, but the malaise caused does not seem to be of a permanent character. In the spring, in Britain, when north-easterly winds prevail, the amount of skin disease, rheumatism, neuralgia, &c., is sufficiently remarkable, and the blights they cause in plants is a fact known to all. In a work published by Mulder (“Water en Miht,” Amsterdam, p. 181), we find it mentioned that Van Swinden investigated the mutations of atmospheric pressure as a cause of sickness, and arrived at the conclusion that a low pressure was not the cause of sickness and fever. He remarked that although there had been many years in which much sickness prevailed, seemingly connected with hot and dry weather, the barometer had varied but little. Thus, at Haarlem, in the period between 1755 and 1780, the maximum was 30·9, the minimum or lowest, 28·0. The summer of 1779 was extremely hot, and a fever epidemic appeared which continued for three years. It was ascribed to the draining of several polders. Several learned societies made reports on the subject of this fever, but they elicited no new facts. It was generally agreed that the deeper the mud and turf containing vegetable matter were under water, the less was the sickness resulting from the draining. A Mynheer Driessen called public attention to the circumstance that on the coasts of Holland there were many places where animal and vegetable matter had
- 45. accumulated and was in a state of rottenness or fermentation; and in this state he suggested that being carried inland by strong westerly winds, it might give rise to sickness. It is remarkable, however, that both the influenza and cholera progressed against the prevailing westerly winds. 10 Men in a state of nature seem to resist malaria. Thus the natives of Newfoundland and of Canada generally, and indeed of all America, withstood readily the malaria of their native land, but perished when brought within the influence of European domesticity. We must allow, however, for the power of race. On the other hand, it seems almost certain that the old Roman armies withstood the influence of climate much more effectually than modern armies do. They lived generally in camps, which they themselves fortified. Of their sanitary regulations we know nothing, but of their camps we know that no English or French soldiers could possibly stand their ground for any length of time similarly encamped. A legion (about 12,000 men) encamped on a space of 700 yards square; what became of the refuse of the camp, and how was it disposed of? No Crimean disasters ever happened to Cæsar; he could not afford to lose his veteran Legions as we lost the Guards. 11 Gibbon, vol. vii., p. 421, Milman’s edition. 12 The cholera, in so far as I know, has not as yet penetrated beyond the tropic into the southern hemisphere. 13 In the Times of to-day (September 8th), the contagious character of the plague is stoutly denied by one who seems to write from authority, or who at least is evidently well backed by a strong party. The writer is evidently one of the Commissioners who met in Paris some years ago to inquire into the working of the quarantine laws. I offer no opinion on the subject,—though “one-idea” men, they have a show of truth on their side, and especially in this, that they adopt the popular view of the subject when they deny the contagious nature of the plague. They boldly affirm that plague only spreads in places where sanitary regulations are despised—a consoling and useful theory, even if it were not true. They made the same assertions of cholera—their hypothesis proved sadly at fault. The pump-well water-drinking theory is the latest expression of medical theorists in respect of
- 46. the origin of the cholera: there never was a greater delusion. It does not merit a refutation, and is quite unworthy the professors of even a conjectural art. That the symptoms of cholera strongly resemble the action of a violent poison taken into the stomach, is not to be questioned, and that water may have been the vehicle of such a poison is neither impossible nor even improbable. The iced-water drinking population of Paris, of Palermo, and of many Sicilian and Italian towns, suffered terribly from cholera. Nor does it spare the temperate Mahometan, upon whom cleanliness is enjoined as an article of his faith. Still, the wholly inexplicable facts in the spread of cholera (and the same may be said of plague, typhus, and yellow fever) are far too numerous to admit of any generalization. Whilst the cholera spared Birmingham—at the time neither properly drained nor sewered, it nearly depopulated Bilston, a healthy town situated only a few miles from Birmingham, hundreds in the meantime travelling between the two places every hour of the day. It swept off the inhabitants of one side of a street in Deptford, leaving those on the other side unscathed. All drank of the same waters. The theory merits no attention. 14 It raged most severely in Scotland, in the remarkably healthy village of Prestonpans and Fisher-row; in the highest and healthiest parts of Edinburgh; amongst the peasantry and miners scattered over the high grounds of Midlothian, belonging to the Marquis of Lothian. These people lived comfortably in detached cottages amongst the fields. 15 This question, in so far as regards a military life, has been handled in a masterly manner by Major Tulloch. 16 In the expedition to St. Domingo, the English army forming the expedition landed 10,000 strong; they withdrew in five weeks, without striking a blow or seeing an enemy. Their numbers were reduced to 1100. See “History of the Expedition to St. Domingo,” by Dr. Maclean. 17 Persius, Sat. Napoleon expressed the same idea when he said, “The stomach governs Europe.” 18 It has been asserted on good authority, and not contradicted, that the “Natural Theology” of the celebrated Paley is a mere
- 47. translation of a Dutch work. 19 This principle, so fertile in ideas, will one day, no doubt, be fully elaborated and studied to its results. These living beings may prove to be the syphons of perfume and the messengers of colour. 20 For Note on this subject, see page 54. 21 “Statistical Report on the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding among the Troops in the West Indies.” Prepared from the Records of the Army Medical Department and War-Office Returns. London, 1838. It has been objected to these Reports that they embrace only one class of lives. But this does not diminish their value, for the lives they report on are presumed to be the selected lives of men in the prime of life. 22 The army of England is, and perhaps has at all times been, an aggressive army, maintained to intimidate foreign races and nations. It resembles in many of its main features the army of ancient Carthage. 23 Report: Section, Mediterranean. 24 It may be asked, Why not inquire into the statistics of fever in Essex? The truth is, that no such exist. The conjectures and recollections of civil practitioners are valueless. 25 As by the Registrar-General: see his Reports. 26 The ancient Egyptians seem to me to have long ago settled this question, practically. On the subsidence of the Nile they, without a day’s delay, commenced agricultural operations; nothing was allowed to fall into rottenness or putrefaction. 27 Liebig. 28 Liebig: Letters on Chemistry. 29 Report, p. 176. 30 Liebig, 1851. 31 Traité de Chimie Organique. Par M. J. Liebig. pp. 88. 32 Liebig, loc. cit. 33 The “Sunderland Times” gives publicity to the following frightful narrative, drawn up by Captain Edward Robinson, of
- 48. Sunderland, commander of the ship Raleigh, of South Shields:—“I arrived at this place in the beginning of May, 1858, being sent to bring home a vessel whose captain died of yellow fever; little did I think, before leaving home, that I should have witnessed the sufferings of so many of my fellow-creatures that were ill of this dreadful epidemic. I was told it would be all over before I arrived, but I found that, so far from that being the case, its ravages were unmitigated. In the street that I lodged in, five in one family were buried from the house in one day. The Rio journals were publishing in their columns, ‘No cases of yellow fever to-day.’ One ship at the port had seven captains dead before she could be brought out of the place. The vessel—the Raleigh of South Shields—that I have come home in command of, had her captain, chief officer, second officer, and four of her crew stricken down by the disease. On the day before the Captain died I visited him at the hospital; I there witnessed such sights as I hope never again to see—poor sailors in the height of the fearful malady, with the black vomit, vomiting dark fluid like coffee. I shall never forget the looks they gave me, and how their poor dull eyes brightened as I gave them a word of comfort, and told them they would get better. Next day, when I returned to see them, I found the whole gone—the captain and six of his crew, all dead and buried. Still, ‘No cases of fever,’ say the Rio journals. The number carried off by yellow fever from February to May, 1858, amounted to 1609, upwards of 600 of the deaths being among English sailors. The presence of a plague fever is not to be wondered at, the state of the town being a disgrace to civilized people. All manner of filth is to be met with in most parts of the town. Dead animals and filth I cannot describe meet your eye and offend your senses almost everywhere. “My brother, now sixty-eight years of age, and who has been thirty-six years at Rio, informs me that he has often seen Europeans on ’Change in the morning, who died and were buried on the same evening. He has seen Rio cleared five times of Europeans. The pestilence, he believes, comes from the flat marshy land near Rio. The natives burn tar-barrels to purify the atmosphere.” 34 Deuteronomy xxii. 12.
- 49. 35 The Registrar-General consoles the inhabitants of London on the relative amount of injury, being in favour of the plan of polluting the Thames rather than of gradually abolishing cesspools. 36 “Letters on Chemistry.” By Justus von Liebig. London, 1857. 37 Liebig, p. 384. 38 The guano of sea-birds when exposed to rain is of no value. 39 Liebig. 40 Henle, “Untersuchungen,” p. 52; also p. 57. 41 The expression of Lord Raglan when he demanded from England veteran troops, and not lads of immature age, to be sent to the seat of war. 42 Reign of Charles the Second. 43 He is, I believe, a physician and an M.D. 44 Quetelet. 45 Cholera has not, as yet, passed into the southern hemisphere beyond the tropical line. 46 “The town of Port Antonio is situated at the north-eastern extremity of the island, eighty miles from Kingston, and lies in a hollow surrounded by an amphitheatre of thickly-wooded hills. Fort George, in which are the barracks for the troops, is built at the extremity of a peninsula, nearly surrounded by the sea; and though possessing no great elevation, it has, from its position, a tolerably free exposure to the breeze. On each side of the peninsula are two harbours for the shipping; that on the east side enjoys a comparatively healthy locality, but that on the west is sheltered by a thickly-wooded hill, which impedes ventilation; and there is a considerable space of level ground, generally inundated by the tide, which at low water is left in a marshy state, and when acted on by the sun emits exhalations said to be both offensive and unhealthy. “The barracks stand about twenty yards from the sea, on a piece of ground of coralline formation, and consist of a building of two stories, elevated on brick pillars. The hospital is built on a higher situation, and raised on arches about seven feet. It contains three
- 50. wards for the patients, and has a shaded walk attached to it for convalescents. Water is supplied to the troops, by contract, from a river a quarter of a mile distant. “There seems to have been no troops at this station in 1825 and 1826, but the mortality during the other years embraced in the Report has been as under: Years. Strength. Deaths. Ratio of deaths per 1000 of mean strength. 1817 177 34 192 1818 135 12 89 1819 130 45 346 1820 143 12 84 1821 82 18 219 1822 194 10 52 1823 79 4 51 1824 108 21 194 1827 32* 3 94 1828 129 19 147 1829 133 31 233 1830 155 21 135 1831 161 20 124 1832 157 29 185 1833 164 37 226 1834 185 32 173 1835 154 18 117 1836 160 4 25 Total 2478 370 ... Average 137 20 149·3 * 127 men were here for one quarter of a year only, which is equivalent to 32 for a whole year. “Thus the local circumstances remaining the same, the mortality from fever yet varies exceedingly. It is the same with the typhus of temperate countries, showing that in addition to malaria, presumed to be ever present, a something more is required, that we must look for in the constitution of the atmosphere.”
- 51. 47 I am free to admit, with Liebig, that the lungs are the seat of the most rapid and powerful chemical action (p. 151), yet some distinguished physiologists think that the external integuments may become the seat of disease, and give origin to dangerous affections by mere stoppage of their secretions and excretions. Certain of these are held to be poisonous and highly irritating, and cholera itself has been ascribed to the sudden transfer of the tegumentary secretions into the general torrent of the blood. This seems to have been the opinion of the celebrated anatomist and physiologist, De Blainville. 48 Citrates, tartrates, acetates. 49 Eremacaasie: Liebig. 50 All constitutions are not equally liable to be affected by morbid poisons. This has been proved as regards dissecting-room wounds; and as regards typhus, cholera, plague, ague, &c., the matter admits of no doubt. 51 Blood has a mordant given to it which dyes it red; when this is in excess, the blood becomes black, or very dark. This was the colour of the blood in cholera. Its crasis seemed to be broken down, and I have it on sure anatomical testimony, that in dissecting those who had died of cholera, the larger veins, when once opened, continued to pour out blood for many days. 52 The various plans for the deodorization of cesspools, water- closets, dead-wells, sewers, &c., were first introduced into England from France and Belgium. Under French management Paris is sweet, and proverbially clean and pleasant; London, under the management of parties without individual responsibility, notoriously filthy and full of bad odours. Under certain circumstances, and especially when limited to small quantities of the matter to be deodorized, they are successful enough in destroying the unpleasant odour, but in the experiments made a few years ago on the comparative merits of various kinds of deodorants, it was obvious that no real dependence could be placed on them, unless the cesspool was at the same time flushed or cleansed out with a very strong flow of pure water poured in along with the deodorant. In how far the various
- 52. deodorants recommended are at the same time disinfectants, has never yet been shown. The excreta deodorized have hitherto proved of but small commercial value, farmers very generally declining their use. It is singular that the same guano (human) which is said to be so valuable in China, should prove a failure in Europe, and especially in England, showing how much still remains to be discovered in practical agriculture. If human guano really be of such value in China as has been reported, might it not be worth while to import into Britain a few Chinese agricultural labourers and gardeners thoroughly acquainted with the agriculture of their country, and from whom might be learned the art of preparing the manure? Capitalists have engaged in many less promising speculations than this. From whatever source the Chinese derived their knowledge of the domestic and fine arts they now possess (for it is impossible to imagine that they invented them), one thing is certain—that they were recording eclipses, printing books, building temples, raising crops equal to the support of a vast population, whilst the great nations of Western Europe were wandering about in their native woods, clothed in the skins of animals, ignorant even of agriculture, and barbarous to the last degree. Nor was the knowledge and taste of the Chinese confined, in the matter of agriculture and horticulture, to the merely useful, as is obvious by a passage in Humboldt’s “Kosmos,” wherein the illustrious savant proves that the ancient Chinese, in respect of taste in horticulture, and in the composition of park scenery, excelled all the world. 53 Ozone is said to oxidize the poison. It destroys sulphuretted hydrogen and all oxydable miasms, and is the most powerful disinfecting agent, but is itself unfit for respiration: it causes suffocation. Air in its normal state contains one ten-thousandth part of ozone; when raised to one two-thousandth part it is sufficient to kill small animals. 54 Hydrogen, or inflammable air, is the lightest known substance; its specific gravity is to that of air as 732 to 1000. The gases, into the composition of which it enters, rising from these ditches and banks of mud carry with them dried humus, and even animal
- 53. matter in a state of putrefaction, which, being dry or moist, may act as strongly as variola itself, in respect of its injurious effects on man, who breathes it either as it rises from ditches, or is driven by currents of air circulating round watery places covered with humus. It is even (onctueux) so strong that it will sustain seeds and dust upon water, as I have witnessed at Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Verona, Bologna, Venice, and even in the canals of Lambeth and Deptford. By means of hydrogen we raise a balloon; can we not imagine it to be equal to the raising up of humus? It is generally supposed that sulphuretted hydrogen is amongst the dangerous miasms, but it cannot be so hurtful, for no boat can go into canals without disturbing it, and yet we see no evil results from this; but if the water-level lowers, and leaves vegetable or animal matter upon mud in a state of slow combustion, then it is that fevers commence—a fact, I think, I have proved by an appeal to the history of pestilences in ancient and modern times. 55 “Decline and Fall,” vol. iii. p. 391, Milman’s edition. 56 The idea of employing the drainage of towns, partaking under all circumstances more or less of the nature of sewage—using the term in its most extensive sense, as comprising the excreta of the entire population—seems first to have originated in Scotland, and especially in the vicinity of the capital. The period is perhaps not well known, but about the commencement of the present century we find the system in full force, but limited to the great outlets of the drainage and soiled water of the town. These great drains were not strictly speaking sewers, but drains, for at that time there were but few sewers, properly so called. If cesspools existed, they were not emptied into the drains, or so-called town- sewers, so that the matters contained in the two great outlets used for the purposes of foul-water irrigation bore little or no resemblance to the turbid, frightful, and most putrescent mass now conveyed into the Thames by the sewers of London. This essential distinction in the quality of the material has been ignored or passed over in the Reports of the Board of Health. Not that the irrigating water was to be considered as pure; on the contrary, it was extremely filthy; but it did not at that time contain the sewage of the town, properly speaking. It probably now does so in consequence of the extension of the system of water- closets, latrines, &c. The Scotch agriculturists who employed the
- 54. water of these vast foul drains, would have much preferred pure water, but they had it not at their command. With this, such as it was, they irrigated certain tracts of land, some of which were originally barren wastes, converting them into meadows on which grew a peculiar kind of grass, which cattle (milch cows) do not reject after having been accustomed to its use. But the farmers knew well that the abominable liquid they thus poured over their fields was wholly unfit for the usual agricultural purposes; and thus in no instance did they employ it as manure. The Grange drain was used by one market-gardener only, simply for the purposes of irrigation during droughts, but not with any view to the manuring of the garden. By the time that all the cesspools of London have been poured into the drains, and the system of drainage and sewage completed and formed into one system, there arises the question as to how the material is to be disposed of? The pouring it into the Thames at a point below the influence of the tide is perhaps, after all, the easiest and least expensive mode of escaping from the dilemma into which the capital has been brought by the clumsy experiments of the late Board of Health; but what the ultimate result of this additional experiment may be, no one can foretel. If transmitted to the fields, the farmers are sure to reject it as manure; but it might be conveyed to barren waste lands, mere sandy wastes, the qualities of which no doubt in time it would beneficially affect, converting them first into meadows, and possibly afterwards into land favourable for the growth of certain green crops. The liquid might also be conveyed to estuaries which it might be desirable to fill up, and the numerous small tidal harbours which the extension of railways will speedily render of little or no value to the inhabitants. The mud deposited in tidal harbours or on the banks of rivers within the influence of the tide is of no value as a manure; when spread over the fields, the result is the loss of the crops for some years. 57 Gibbon. 58 Niebuhr. 59 Extremique hominum, Morini Rhenusque bicornis. Æneid viii.
- 55. 60 “Ab urbe condita;” from the building of the city (Rome), the era fixed on by the Romans. 61 This question was first agitated in the reign of Justinian, on the occasion of a proposal on his part to form a treaty with the negroes of Abyssinia. But the Abyssinians were not negroes. 62 Trajan’s wall, between the Danube and the Euxine, at Kostenjie. 63 There were no medical men in Rome for the first five centuries of her great career; and some have fancied that this fact explains the astonishing number of armies which the republic found no difficulty in sending into the field. 64 When unassisted by other deleterious influences, the poison, though all but universal over the locality, may not be destructive. After the draining the Lake of Haarlem, the principal physician of the district informed me that in 2000 cases of ague he had not lost a patient. 65 The choleraic ferment traversed in ships, no doubt, the Atlantic, as typhus had often done before; but there are grounds for believing that vegetable and animal matters in a state of rottenness (fermentation), floating about in the air, are not unfrequently transported to great and almost incredible distances. Ehrenberg and Humboldt have particularly insisted on this fact, and have spoken of distances traversed by these fermentable elements, which I hesitate to quote from memory. Assuredly they were very great, extending to some hundred miles from the seat of their origin. 66 England has often paid a high price for the first steps in science. Mr. Papillion, in 1806, received from Government 10,000l. for the introduction of dyeing Turkey red; and his success was owing to his knowledge of the water proper for the operation, which must be void of fermentable bodies. 67 The ammonia always present in the atmosphere is probably derived chiefly from the union of nitrogen and hydrogen; but much of it also no doubt has its source in the fermentation of animal and vegetable remains. 68 Baron von Lynden.
- 56. 69 I have known many persons sickly from the effects of intermitting fever or malaria from a residence in warm climates, and who have suffered and perished from an injudicious treatment. Ill-formed or incomplete agues are extremely common, even in the south of England, in London especially. They show themselves under a variety of forms, and with much severity, in the cases of those who, having once visited a true malarious climate, are ever afterwards more or less liable to a return of the disease. Let men reflect; simple truths travel slowly, yet are truths notwithstanding. The death of the well-known M. Soyer was evidently caused by his wholly misunderstanding the nature of his complaint, which, in fact, was a fever originally caught in the Crimea. 70 A friend who resided long on the Grotevisch Rivière, and in het land den Caffre, informs me that if the Zuureveld be ploughed up, or altered by the burning, for example, of a Caffre hut, the sour grass, whence the district derives its name, disappears, and sweet herbage of various kinds take its place. None of these exist naturally in the district, so that the seeds must come from great distances. 71 The effects of partial and incomplete drainage have ever been the same. In 1823, when the new Polder was made at Neusen- on-the Sheldt, small-pox raged in the neighbouring villages to such an extent that the children were forbidden to attend school. The effects are to be seen now in persons over sixty years of age, bearing the marks of the epidemic. The whole atmosphere of the district was infected. 72 Law being no body, and quite irresponsible, the blame of these cruel experiments on the health of the population cannot readily be brought home to any one. 73 It is to be remarked that the specific gravity of ammoniacal gas is 53·619; can it be wondered at that this gas should carry bodies from waters which are in a state of slow combustion; during its transit through the air it may even become caustic ammonia? 74 Purification of the Thames. A Letter by F. O. Ward, Esq., addressed to William Coningham, Esq., M.P. London: Renshaw,
- 57. Strand. 75 It is mentioned in the Report on the Wine Disease in Portugal, that the oidium was first discovered at Margate; if this was the case, might it not have originated from the phosphorescent beings in sea water, observed by all travellers in the evening on the coasts of Flanders, and known in Holland as Zee Vlam? The potato disease is thought by some to have sprung from the same cause.
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