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similar effects were observed by Hajendie when animals were confined
over vessels in which animal matter was decaying.
These questions throw much light upon the tendency of putrid effluvia
to produce typhus, cholera, &c.
Partially decomposed sausages, cheese, ham, bacon, smoked sprats, and
different varieties of fish, &c., have frequently caused disease and death.
Under this head I may also mention milk from diseased cows; and
where these animals are kept without a supply of proper food, fresh air,
light, and exercise, and in the midst of offensive refuse. This may, I
think, be more often a cause of disease than is anticipated.
Cause VI. Brains, Privies, Cesspools, Slaughter Souses, Grave Yards, and
other Sources of Animal Decomposition.
A dense, warm, moist atmosphere, with no wind, is a favourable condition
for the production of fever and other epidemic diseases; and when to
these conditions are superadded a want of drainage or imperfect drainage,
the contiguity of privies, manure and offal heaps, grave yards, or other
foci of animal decomposition, the exciting cause is perfect; and there is
nothing more wanted than human beings fitted by intemperance, delicacy,
debility, fatigue, or anxiety, for the reception of those invisible gases which
are so fertile in the production of disease.
The decomposition of animal matter is called " putrefactive fermentation
; " and in this manner, favoured by warmth and moisture, it returns,
after a due period, into its ultimate elements.
The products of this fermentation consisting of poisonous compounds
remarkable for their foetor of hydrogen, with sulphur, phosphorus, and
carbon, and of these gases, with portions of offensive and partially decomposed
animal matter.
That these causes are sufficient to produce dire disease and epidemy has
been abundantly proved by the liability in crowded and badly ventilated
jails, transport ships, among armies, &c., to generate fever, cholera, &c.;
hence the terms jail fever, camp fever, &c., with which we are unfortunately
familiar.
Put the court-yards and roads interspersed among the poor dwellings of
some neighbourhoods, are places thickly strewed with the seeds of disease.
Malaria rise at times from these localities, mixed with animal poison, which
when inhaled, cannot fail to engender debility, consumption, disease, and
pauperism.
These causes act by depressing the vital powers, and vary only in intensity
according to the quantity of poison absorbed.
Cause VII. Marsh Miasm.
The exhalations thrown out from decomposing vegetable matter, only
partially covered with water and exposed to the sun's rays, are called
miasmata.
The precise nature of these emanations has as yet been undecided, some
saying that they consist of sulphuretted hydrogen, some hydro-carbon, &c.,
but the fact is well known, that they are capable of producing, in those exposed
to their influence, a peculiar disease termed intermittent fever
or ague.