458 



MEDICINE AND MEDICAL STATISTICS. [Sect. XIV, 



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nexion with respiration, will require to he examined to 

 ascertain whetlicrtbe %nctional derangement which exists 



in the organs of oangnification and respiration, in the 

 first instance, he the effect of a chemical change in the 

 blood ; or whether it be the result of an impression made 

 on t 





nervous system by some power exterior to the 

 body : and w^hether such derangement of action inter- 

 rupts the normal transfer of elementary principles bet\Yeen 

 the external air and the blood, thereby leaving the latter 



so STeatlv altered and deteriorated as to be chemicallY 

 defective in those constituents requisite for the repair of 

 the organic structures, while it abounds in the lethal 

 effete matters that are constantly received into it from the 

 decav of the latter. 



In the Naval service, more perhaps than in any otlie^*^ 

 there are frequent opportunities of ascertaining to a day. 



and even to an hour, the exact period of incubation ^n 

 certain febrile and eruptive diseases: although this m '' 

 also gri-atly depend on the disease being g^^dually ui 



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suddenly developed. A party of men, a boat's crew for 

 instance, ni-y enter a vessel, a house, or a village in 

 w^liich disease is raging ; or they may land, expose thoin- 

 selves L the influence of a "homicidal marsh," and then 

 retnri on board their own vessel, having intialed a ^uffi- 

 ciencj of th^^ poison to establish a certain specific morbid 

 action J bearing, if of a personal nature, the exact sirr/.'^i- 

 tude of its parent ; and if of a terrestrial, that type of 

 fe. ur v^LIcli is peculiar to the climate orL-^ulity, or to th< 



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■mg epidemic — it will of course follow that in pro- 



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p^'^tion to th 



e 



r^^^gth of time the patier^- have been 



exposed to the exciting miasm, so in an inverse d^^ree 



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