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Archiver > IA-IRISH > 2002-04 > 1017975250


From: "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>
Subject: [IA-IRISH] More news articles on Cholera 1849
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 20:54:10 -0600


The Gazette
Davenport, Scott, Iowa
Oct 25, 1849

ADDITIONAL NEWS BY THE NIAGRA
New York, Oct. 19

The Cholera is decreasing in all parts of Europe. Total deaths in England
since the 7th of June 13,000.


Nov. 29, 1849

CHOLERA AND ANIMALCULES.
The importance of a microscope in investigating the origin and phenomena of
disease, is daily becoming more apparent. Already has it determined many
disputed points in medical science, and it seems destined to still greater
achievements.

The animalcular theory of contagion is likely to receive improtant aid, if
not the triumphant establishment, by its wonderful revelations.

That Cholera has an animalcular origin is no new theory, but it is recent
microscopic revelations which has given to it apparent confirmation.

Prof. R.D. Mussey, of the Ohio Medical College, to whom we alluded
yesterday, in the course of a series of investigations and experiments, as
early as the first of September last, discovered in the atmosphere of rooms
occupied by Cholera patients, animalcules, in the greatest abundance, and,
by a series of observations, noted the changes that daily took place, and
compared these atmospheric animalcules with those found in the rice-water
discharges and the muscle of cholera patients.

Prof. Mussey experimented upon specimens of fluid obtained by teh
condensation of vapor by the side of cholera patients- on a single drop
placed under the microscope, a multitude of animalcules were discovered
moving in all directions. In the rice water discharges also, the same
animals were discovered--one of these animals, viewed through a magnifier of
2000 linear diameters, appears about one-fourth of an inch long, and moves
with a lateral flexure of his body, like a serpent on the ground.

These animals exhibit considerable tenacity of life- they are active at
nearly eighty degrees Fahrenheit. The atmospheric animalcules survived
thirteen days in a loosely corked phial, and the rice water animals were
alive after fourteen days.

In the muscle of a cholera patient, taken ten hours after death, multitudes
of animalcules were seen, but the same experiment with a piece of muscle
taken from a subject, dead of crysipelas, discovered not a single
animalcule.

The hydrant water was also tested without finding any of these animals, and
the atmosphere of rooms and neighborhoods some days after the cholera had
disappeared, was condensed and examined without detecting animalcules.

The atmosphere of rooms in which are small pox patients, has also been
examined and animalcules of apparently a different species have been
discovered.

The important experiments and discoveries of Professor Mussey, will be made
public in the forthcoming November number of the Western Lancet, and we hope
and trust, will aid in explaining the mysterious movements of this "black
death", and result in discovering a preventive and a remedy.--Cincinnati
Gaz.




Cathy Joynt Labath
The Irish in Iowa
http://www.celticcousins.net/irishiniowa/index.htm


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