Miscellaneous works. Of the late Robert Willan. Comprising, An inquiry into the antiquity of the small-pox, measles, and scarlet fever, now first published: Reports on the diseases in London, a new edition. And detached papers on medical subjects, collected from various periodical publications / Edited by Ashby Smith.

  • Willan, Robert, 1757-1812.
Date:
1821
    this subject afforded by their writings, may be adequately accounted for by the practice usual among the antient physicians, of refer¬ ring to the same pestilential constitution, dif¬ ferent malignant fevers; and regarding the eruptions attending them as the crises of dis¬ orders which varied less in their general nature, than in accidental combinations of the peccant humours of the body. Another impediment, it has been said, to the progress of correct observation might have been derived from the feelings of appre¬ hension and dread which contagious and fatal disorders are calculated to inspire in the minds of the attendants. To this might be added the influence of superstition, which probably on another account, deterred or pre¬ vented the antient physicians from giving that close attention to the sick which would have enabled them to note accurately the phenomena of pestilential diseases : — such maladies being generally considered as the infliction of divine vengeance on a guilty nation, medicine and all human aid were deemed unavailing. In examining ur. vv man s arguments in support of the affirmative of this question, it will be found that they are urged with greatest
    / PREFACE. Xi force, and supported with more direct evi¬ dence, in the first and second chapters of his Inquiry . These were revised by him in his last illness : his farther progress in the task of correction having been terminated by death. It is due to his memory, and to the Public, to state this fact, which may at the same time furnish the editor with an apology for attempting a slight analytical sketch of the contents of this posthumous work.' It has been already observed that the com¬ monly received opinion of the comparatively modern origin of the contagious eruptive fe¬ vers, rests on the absence or deficiency of distinct and express notice of these diseases in the writings of the antients. The treatise in question deprives this argument of much of its weight, by shewing that, according to a very high degree of probability, they were in existence during the periods in which those authors flourished, to whom they were by no means unknown; but that looking on these complaints merely as species of the common Pestilence, they treated of them conjointly with it, and considered it unnecessary to assign to them particular denominations, or to leave precise and accurate descriptions of them, as discriminated from the generic dis¬ temper, on record. (Vide “ Inquiry,"’ p. 18.)
    Rhazes, the Arabian, the first writer ex¬ tant who mentions the Small-pox under a specific name, was of opinion that it existed at least as early as the second century of the Christian sera, and was well known to Galen. (pp. 1 and 2.) The Greek writer who translated Rhazes’s treatise on Small-pox into that language, remarks on Galen’s acquaintance with the disease as an undoubted fact, observing, how- f ever, that he only speaks of it “ cursorily or in connection with analogous complaints.” (p. 20.) The title of this translation (mg) Aco (AMTig) and its preface prove that the Smalhpox had been known to the antient Greeks under the name of Loimike (the loimic or pestilen¬ tial disease) and even divided into two distinct species, (pp. 20, 21.) Haly f. Abbas states that the antients (Greeks) called the Variohae, Anthrakes:— Constantiims Africanus, who used the Roman language, says, “ Antiqui vocant has (vario¬ las) ignis carbones—and the modern Greeks yet apply the terms Loirne and Loimic dis¬ ease to the Small-pox and Measles, (pp. 18, 19.) The identity, or near resemblance of these several denominations to those employed by the same people to describe the Plague itself,
    mid its more characteristic symptoms (Loitnos and Anthrakes), evidently implies such an imagined close affinity between the things de¬ noted by them, as is above asserted to have obtained- in former ages ;—strengthens the former reasoning with regard to the alleged confusion of all these diseases ;—and goes far towards explaining the causes why the de¬ scriptions or allusions to the variolous erup¬ tions, actually transmitted to us, should have been overlooked. For, since the Arabians themselves, long after the supposed origin of Small-pox, arranged it, the Measles, and the pestilential Bubo as the products of the same contagion, it was reasonable to expect that some traces of Variola might be found in the histories of Pestilences occurring in more antient times, (p. 2.) Pursuing this idea, Dr. Wilkin institutes a strict analysis of the leading published state¬ ments on Pestilence; and the results of the investigation arc such as had been antici¬ pated ; clearly evincing, that certain parts of them must, in almost every instance, refer to the Small-pox, and to the Small-pox only. He sets out by laying down a comprehen¬ sive definition of Pestis (p. 2, note,) as a standard wherewith to compare the recorded
    varieties of the general Pestilence to which his inquiry extends, with a view to distinguish and distribute them into their specific classes. The first chapter carries this investigation from the middle of the third century (p. 12) to the presumed period of the first appearance of the Small-pox, at Mecca, A.I). 569 or 70. (p. 17.) An examination of the circumstances of the Epidemic which broke out at Alexandria, A.I). 252, and spread with great fury for twelve or fifteen jrears, ascertains this import¬ ant point, that that Pestilence was not one uniform disorder, but comprised several of different kinds under it (pp. 12, 13,) distin¬ guished by the narrators from the common Loimos. The histories of the next considerable Plague in point of time (that which prevailed in Syria in the reign of Dioclesian) lead to the following deductions vitally material to the question at issue. 1. The mortality was not occasioned by one form of disease, but, independently of the common Loimos, there was, according to Eusebius, another disorder termed, from its fiery nature, Anthrax. 2. This An¬ thrax spread over the whole bodies of the suffer¬ ers. 3. The eyes were very frequently affected,