ADDITIONAL NOTES 



ox 



CONTAGION, &c. 



NOTE A. (See page 202.) 



Observations on Contagion. Communicated in a Letter to Dr. Chisholm, of (Clifton) 

 England; dated New-York, Jidy 16, 1808. 



Dear Sir, 

 Agree ABLYtomy promise in a fo rmer communication, I shall now state to you the 

 result of my observations on contagion, a subject which has created so much dispute 

 in the medical world, and which divides our profession in the western as well as in the 

 eastern hemisphere. As far as I have examined this subject, it appears to me to be more 

 a dispute about words than facts* The abuse of the terms contagion and infection, and 

 the neglect of writers in not annexing to them ' precise definition of the manner in which 

 they severally employ them, have, I believe been the source of our medical warfare, 

 relative to the contagiousness of yellow fever, and some other diseases : e. g. the greater 

 number of medical writers enumerate, in the list of contagious diseases, all those which 

 are in any way communicable from one person to another, whether by contact, fomites, 

 atmosphere, &c. without designating the circumstances attending these several modes of 

 communication. 



Lind, in his papers on contagion and infection, (which he considers as synonymous 

 terms,) is guilty of this error, in which he has been followed by most writers upon the 

 subject of fever, &c. The late Dr. Bayley, in his account of the yellow fever which 



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