Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

Dft. O. C. Gibbs. Summary. [November,K. Mitchell, M. D., who referred them to a crjptogamous origin.That certain diseases occur only when there is a conjunction ofcertain atmospheric and terrene conditions ris almost universallyadmitted; that the terrene conditions exercise a controllinginfluence, is a fact too well established to admit of doubt ; andthat that terrene condition or element is effluvial, is more thanproblematical. But why dissimilar diseases from similar causes ?That the plague and yellow fever occur only under similar, ifnot absolutely identical conditions, is well known. High temperature,humid atmosphere, lowness of site, density of population,and animal and vegetable putrescence, with a preponderanceof the former, are necessary conditions to the productionof a miasm that will develop either of the above-mentioned diseases.If the causes are the same, why not the results ? If theseconditions develop the plague in Constantinople, why not inNew Orleans ; and the reverse, in regard to yellow fever ? Weanswer by putting another question. If sugar, starch, and gumarabicare composed of precisely the same ingredients, in twoof the instances, in precisely the same proportions, why are notthe physical properties of the resulting compounds identical ?If dissimilar substances are isomeric, may not the causes of dissimilardiseases be also isomeric ?Intermittent, remittent, and bilious remittent fevers have alsoterrene causative relations and dependencies, and those causativesare apparently identical, and always present where thesefevers are endemic. The miasm of intermittent differs from themiasm of yellow fever and cholera, but we are not prepared tobelieve the difference to be what Dr. Harvey suggests. Themiasm of an intermittent has a more vegetable origin than thatof yellow fever, and its conditions of development are not thesame. If intermittent fever has always terrene causative relations,why is not that disease always present whenever thosecausative relations exist ? True to our Yankee instincts, weanswer by asking, Why carbon and hydrogen, in the relativeproportion of five parts of the former to four of the latter, incombination, are not always oil of turpentine, and not sometimesoil of lemons, as is well known to be the case ? Why isnot C, 2H, 0, not always starch, when in combination, andnot sometimes gum-arabic and gum tragacanth respectively ?This is not the time or place to enter upon controversial ground,the above thoughts are thrown out simply as suggestives.Laryngismus Stridulus.—In the same nnmber of the Lancetand Observer, Dr. K. E. McMeens, of Sandusky, Ohio, reports acase of the above disease, with a few remarks upon its pathology.Dr.. Hord, in the British and Foreign Medico- ChirurgicalReview^ declares the exciting and sustaining cause of the disease to