Remarks on an epidemic of typhus which prevailed in the cotton districts of Lancashire and was described by Dr. Campbell of Lancaster in the year 1785 / read by Christopher Johnson of Lancaster at the Meeting of Certifying Surgeons held in Manchester on July 14th, 1869.

  • Johnson, Christopher.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on an epidemic of typhus which prevailed in the cotton districts of Lancashire and was described by Dr. Campbell of Lancaster in the year 1785 / read by Christopher Johnson of Lancaster at the Meeting of Certifying Surgeons held in Manchester on July 14th, 1869. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    2/4
    EEIAEKS, &c. Mr. President and Gentlemen— When I consider the audience I address, and the place where we are assembled, men whose watchword is progress, a city in which beyond most others the opinion is held that we are to be taught by the living and not by the dead,—-I feel some hesitation in alluding to anything written or transacted in the year 1785. The scientific history of the past is not without value. It is both pleasant and profitable at times to look back on the work of those who have gone before—to trace therein the rudiments of future discoveries, and to notice how nearly the leaders of public thought have often come to the knowledge of truths, which the mass of mankind have only worked out afterwards by long and painful investigation. Dr. Campbell, of Lancaster, published in the year 1785, “ Observations on the Typhus or Low Contagious Fever,” in which he gave a description of an epidemic which prevailed during the two preceding years among the cotton mills in various parts of Lancashire, and more especially at Lancaster and at Backbarrow near Ulverston. This fever seems to have been so malignant as to have given rise to a panic among the operatives and the people among whom they dwelt. It was believed that the cotton w~as poisonous. Dr. Campbell suc¬ ceeded not only in proving to the public the groundlessness of this opinion, and the business might be safely carried on by attention to certain sanitary regulations, but by his very judicious management he saved what would be even now considered a large proportion of lives. Of the treatment adopted, time will only allow me to say little. Believing • the disease one of debility, he avoided the bleeding and lowering practice of ! the day, and employed a supporting method. He refrained from purgatives, and checked the least tendency to diarrhaea, he gave wine liberally, and bark and opium. In fact his treatment was similar to that of Dr. Graves, thirty years ago, and of many good practitioners of the present day. Like Graves, he fed fevers, and he anticipated that distinguished physician in the use of musk and other anti-spasmodics, and in the admini¬ stration of tartar emetic and opium. He made a close examination of the mills and of the habitations of the workpeople, and paid great attention to ventilation, fumigation, disinfection, and cleanliness. He found at Backbarrow privies contiguous to the workrooms, emitting a very offensive odour. This he remedied by a very ingenious contrivance, having wide pipes made, so that the excrementitious matter fell direct to the bottom, he turned through them a stream of water which washed all away as it came.