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XXV. — On the Influence of Weather upon Disease and Mortality. By R. E. 

 Scoresby-Jackson, M.D., F.R.S.E., F.R.C.P., Lecturer on Materia Medica and 

 Therapeutics at Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh. (Plates XIV.-XVIII.) 



(Read 2d February 18G3.) 



The subject to which I have to invite the attention of the Society this evening 

 is one of no modern origin, the name of Hippocrates, amongst others of the 

 fathers of medicine, being commonly associated with it. There is, indeed, perhaps 

 no branch of medical inquiry whose history dips more deeply into the obscure 

 pages of antiquity. The influence of weather upon disease and mortality has 

 been acknowledged as a potent external force in every age, from that eminently 

 speculative and credulous period when physicians professed to receive their 

 diagnostic as well as their therapeutic inspirations from the stars, down to our 

 own day. And yet there is perhaps no question in the whole cycle of medical 

 sciences which has made slower progress than the one we have now to consider. 

 People believe that the weather affects them. They speak of its influence, some- 

 times commendingly, more frequently with censure, on the most trivial occasions ; 

 but beyond a few commonplace ideas, the result of careless observation, or 

 perhaps acquired only traditionally, they seldom seek a closer acquaintance with 

 the subject. Our language teems with medico-meteorological apophthegms, but 

 they are notoriously vague. The Avords which are most commonly employed to 

 signify the state of the weather at any given time, possess a value relative only 

 to the sensations of the individual uttering them. The general and convertible 

 terms — bitter, raw, cold, severe, bleak, inclement, or fine and bracing, convey no 

 definite idea of the condition of the weather ; nay, it is quite possible that we 

 may hear these several expressions used by different persons with reference to 

 the weather of one and the same place and point of time. In order, then, to 

 render medico-meteorological researches more trustworthy, we must be careful 

 to employ, in the expression of facts, such symbols only as have a corresponding 

 value in every nation. 



As a matter of purely medical inquiry, the influence of weather is also too fre- 

 quently neglected. So true is this, that when we examine the literature — at least 

 the modern literature — of the subject, we find it to be most meagre, and very 

 few are the statistics which we meet with to guide us in a further research. 

 When I say, that in a medical point of view the influence of weather has been 

 disregarded, I speak relatively to the amount of labour bestowed upon other 

 branches of medical science ; and I do not for a moment ignore the valuable con- 

 tributions to this department which have been made from time to time by phy- 

 sicians of distinction. In France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and America, as well 



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