Putrid animal matter when injected into the veins of healthy animals proves quickly fatal; and from the experiments of Gaspard and Magendie,[1] together with the more recent researches of MM. Leuret and Hamont,[2] the disease induced seems to resemble closely the typhoid fever of man.
Similar effects were observed by Magendie, when dogs were confined over vessels in which animal matter was decaying, so that they were obliged always to breathe the exhalations.[3] These discoveries throw some light on the question regarding the tendency of putrid effluvia to engender fever in man; and notwithstanding many well ascertained facts of an opposite import, they show that, probably in peculiar circumstances, decaying animal matter may excite epidemic fevers. A detailed investigation of this important topic would be misplaced here, as it belongs more to medical police than to medical jurisprudence; but the two works quoted below are referred to for examples, in my opinion, of the unequivocal origin of continued fever in the cause now alluded to;[4] and other instances of the like kind will be found in the Report of the Parliamentary Commission on the Health of Towns.
Another affection sometimes brought on by putrid exhalations is violent diarrhœa or dysentery, of which a remarkable instance lately occurred in the person of a well-known French physician, M. Ollivier. While visiting a cellar where old bones were stored, he was seized with giddiness, nausea, tendency to vomit and general uneasiness; and subsequently he suffered from violent colic with profuse diarrhœa, which put on the dysenteric character and lasted for three days.[5] Chevallier, in noticing this accident, mentions his having been affected somewhat in the same way when exposed to the emanations of dead bodies; and it is a familiar fact that medical men, who engage in anatomical researches after long disuse, are apt to suffer at first from smart diarrhœa.
The same remark must be applied here as at the close of the observations in the last section. Without peculiar concurring circumstances no bad effect results. This will follow from many facts illustrative of the innocuous nature of various trades where the workmen are perpetually exposed to the most noisome putrid effluvia. But no facts of the kind are so remarkable as those collected in regard to the establishment at Montfaucon by Parent-Duchatelet, who makes it appear that this most abominable concentration of the worst of all possible nuisances is not merely not injurious to the health of the men and animals employed in and around it, but actually even preserves them from epidemic or epizootic diseases.[6]
The effects of putrid animal matter when applied to wounds have
- ↑ Journal de Physiologie, ii. 1, and iii. 81.
- ↑ Journal des Progrès des Sciences Médicales, 1827, vi. 181.
- ↑ Journal de Physiologie, iii. 85.
- ↑ De divers accidens graves occasionnés par les miasmes d'animaux en putréfaction. Mém. de la Soc. de Med i. 97.—London Med. Chirurg. Review, vi. 202.
- ↑ Annales d'Hyg. Publique et de Med. Légale, vii. 216.
- ↑ Ibidem, viii. and ix. ut supra.
