129 



British Islands, it becomes a question of curious interest, if nothing 

 more, to learn what impressions have been produced on the minds 

 of those who, conversant with the typhoid fever of Paris and other 

 continental cities, have personally compared this disease with the 

 British typhus. Dr. Lombard, of Geneva, so often quoted on this 

 subject, during his visit to England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1836, 

 examined several cases of typhus, two in Dublin, and one in Glas- 

 gow, and finding the symptoms similar to those of the typhoid fever 

 of the Continent, with which he was familiar, expected to find after 

 death the usual dothinenteric lesions; but, on examination, to his 

 great astonishment, no such lesions were found. He says, "in the 

 whole course of my experience I have met with nothing which has 

 surprised me more than this occurrence ; I had been for years en- 

 gaged in the study of typhus fever, and for years my almost daily 

 experience in the dead-room led me to associate certain lesions of the 

 alimentary canal with the symptoms of this disease, when suddenly 

 I find myself assailed by a new experience exactly contradictory of 

 my former ; nor was my new experience unconfirmed by that of the 

 Glasgow or Dublin physicians." With such facts before him, to the 

 question, "whether the two diseases are different or the same?" he 

 answers : "I cannot allow that they are specifically distinct, and con- 

 sequently I am almost forced to give up the opinion that the local 

 changes of structure are of jiaramount importance in causing or pro- 

 ducing the symptoms that accompany this type of fever."* Though 

 Dr. Lombard subsequently resumed the opinion that the two diseases 

 are different, it appears to us he did so without sufficient reasons. f 



In the following year, 1837, Dr. Staberoh, of Berlin, made a visit 

 to Great Britain and Ireland, and for six months devoted himself to 

 the study of the fevers of those countries. His intimate acquaint- 

 ance with the typhoid fever of Paris especially qualified him to com- 

 pare the diseases in question ; and, after doing so, he concluded, that 

 though in many cases the British typhus wanted the follicular lesion 

 of the bowels, the disease was the same as the typhoid affection of 

 the continent.^ 



To the above authorities in favour of the identity of the two forms 

 of disease, we must not omit to add that of M. de Claubry, whose 

 able and elaborate investigations of the subject were published in 

 Paris in 1844. His assemblage of facts, and the inferences he draws 

 from them, seem scarcely to admit of being rationally controverted. 



* Dublin Journal of Med. Science, vol. x., p. 19, 22, 23. t Ibid,, p. 101. 



J Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 426. 



