THEORIES OF MACCULLOCH.
About thirty years ago, as I have already remarked, one of the most
distinguished practical geologists of this or any other country
directed his attention to a subject of much greater difficulty than the
classification of rocks, and their subdivision into primary, secondary,
volcanic, and transition. His object was to discover the origin
or cause of those fatal diseases which, under the names of fever,
dysentery, plague, rheumatism, &c., render the position of man on the
globe so precarious, his life at times so brief, valueless to himself
or to others, his prospects so gloomy; in brief, by tracing to its
origin, if possible, the active agent of such woes to man, to destroy
its fatal influence by practical hygienic measures. In a word, Dr.
Macculloch hoped, by discovering the cause, to devise the means either
of effectually destroying malaria--using the term, however, in a sense
at that time peculiar to himself--or so to mitigate its effects as to
render it less destructive to mankind.
He, an acute and original observer, statistician, and scientific
man, properly so called, did not require to be instructed as to the
lamentable results which the premature death of millions causes to the
surviving relatives--results so eloquently and so correctly depicted
by the illustrious Quetelet in his work on Man.[4] Of all this he was
well aware, and a consciousness of such a condition of humanity, and
a firm belief in the opinion that the cause lay in some defect in our
social system, remediable by human means, led to those inquiries on
which the late Dr. Macculloch based his theory of a universal malaria
the cause of most diseases--a theory now adopted in its entirety by a
large section of the medical faculty, and by the English Government of
the present date.
[4] Quetelet, “Sur l’Homme.”
The theory or theories of Macculloch,[5] as expounded by himself,
amounted in fact to this--that a poison, which may be called malaria,
is generated by vegetable and animal substances whilst undergoing
decomposition or putrefaction, and that to the presence of this poison
may be traced most of the diseases afflicting civilized man. In a
neglected drain or sewer he saw the cause of typhus, of agues, of skin
disease, neuralgias, &c.
[5] The late Dr. Macculloch was a distinguished geologist in the
employment of Government, representing in himself the department
which has now swelled out into the Metropolitan School of Practical
Geology, the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn-street, the
geological department in connexion with the Ordnance, &c. &c. He
resided mostly in London, and moved in the best circles. Though a
strictly scientific man, he was a professor also of the conjectural
art, having been educated as a medical man. Soon after publishing his
first essays on malaria, thrown out as feelers to the profession and
the public, he had his misgivings as to the safety of the course he
was pursuing. To denounce open sewers, undrained streets, untrapped
cesspools, and overflowing dead-wells, was clearly an attack on
the proprietors of London houses; and he called one morning in
great haste on a distinguished barrister, to consult him as to the
possibility of a passage in one of his essays being construed into
a ground for an action for libel! How changed now are the views of
society in respect of all such matters.
These views of Macculloch respecting the origin of malaria and its
effects on man, were, when first published, and indeed for many
years afterwards, looked on with suspicion by the physicians of that
day; they were viewed, in truth, as wildly speculative, and wholly
unsupported by facts. This opinion still prevails with many, but they
are being rapidly borne down by a host of writers--many, it must not
be overlooked, enjoying lucrative official appointments, and who thus
have a deep and touching interest in supporting and maintaining the
theories of Macculloch. An opportunity will occur in the course of
this work of tracing briefly the progress of the mania--for such, to
a certain extent, it speedily became--and of assigning the merit or
demerit of the movement to those to whom it may be due. Here it is only
necessary to allude to it as being in fact the source of all those
visionary and Utopian schemes for the entire renovation of the social
state of man, alternately advocated or deprecated by a press naturally
chiming in with the prevailing public feeling. At times the discussion
acquires an almost feverish character--as when, for example, during
the present summer, “the river” exhaled an odour more than usually
unpleasant; at times it cools down in the presence of a proposal to
expend many millions of the public money on some wild, untried scheme,
under the superintendence of the very men who deliberately, and despite
many warnings, reduced “the river” to its present sad condition--of
men who had not the candour or the honesty to admit that, proceeding
on the conjectures of Macculloch, they hazarded one of the coarsest
experiments ever devised on the health of millions.[6] These were
the men whose course of action the Registrar-General endeavoured to
palliate, on the plausible ground that, although they poisoned the
river, the doing so was much less injurious to the inhabitants of
London than to suffer the cesspools to continue any longer buried
in the earth, although for the most part hermetically sealed! Thus
were they permitted in open day to pollute the surface-drains of the
metropolis, converting them into sewers--to render the streets and
squares impassable--and finally to convert the river itself into a kind
of elongated cesspool! This, says the Registrar-General, is an evil
of less magnitude than the permitting the cesspools and dead-wells to
remain as they were until gradually and cautiously disposed of by other
means.
[6] See the admirable speech of Mr. Disraeli in his place in
Parliament, on the condition of the Thames.
It were easy to show, were it worth while--1st. How the persons to whom
I here allude suffered to be withdrawn from the Thames nearly a half of
its natural waters before reaching London; 2nd. How next they converted
the healthy surface drains of London and of its environs into odious
sewers, ignoring the distinction between drain and sewer, a distinction
which the most ignorant of day labourers perfectly understands, and
heretofore had uniformly respected; 3rd. How they refused to suffer the
suicidal act to proceed gradually and slowly, whereby the river, out of
its own natural resources, might and would in time have accomplished
its own depuration, but as best suiting their ultimate views, issued
compulsory edicts on the inhabitants of this great city to empty into
the river, and almost at once, the accumulated _excreta_ of a quarter
of a century, such being at least the average age of the contents of
the cesspools. Thus was demanded of the river a depurative force at
the least twenty times greater than under another system would have
been required of it. Lastly, to complete a series of experiments
so injurious to the public, but so profitable to individuals, the
same party proposes further to deprive the stream of all aid in the
purification of its waters, by pouring into the German Ocean the
entirety of the water which the natural drainage of London, and the
valley in which it stands, contribute to it, together with one-half the
waters of the river itself, taken from it above the tide-way for the
supply of the capital.
Thus, by a series of manœuvres, transparent enough to those who
have carefully watched the movements for the last twenty years, its
inhabitants are now called on at their own expense to remedy the clumsy
experiments of those who occupy positions they could not fill in any
country but England.[7]
[7] It is right to observe that the unpleasant odour from the Thames,
which during the month of June and part of July of the present year
so disturbed the olfactory nerves of the Londoners, ceased at once
so soon as the Bill for the purification of the Thames passed both
Houses of Parliament. What connexion this had with the causes of the
odour, and how these odours were so opportunely called forth and so
quietly dismissed, I leave to be conjectured by the thoughtful of
all classes. At this moment--August, 1858--during the most intense
heat, the river is as sweet and fresh as a mountain stream, and has
continued so ever since. Some are disposed to ascribe the cessation
of the odours (for the stream is not in any way purified) to the
throwing of quick-lime into the lower sections of the principal
sewers; but if a remedy so simple as this was to be found in such
a process, why was it not employed in June and July? It is only
the unobserving who are surprised at such things, and who have not
happened to observe what follows the spreading of an ancient cesspool
over the fields by the road-side, or pouring its contents into a
comparatively small river. The Thames is a comparatively small river,
and the effects of pouring into it, at a convenient and suitable time
(the dog-days, Parliament sitting, &c.), the contents of half-a-dozen
cesspools of fifty years’ standing, undiluted and at once, would
most assuredly give rise to results such as took place in London in
June and July. The plot was a very nasty one--it might easily have
been traced and the plotters detected: the sewer-makers, under the
direction, no doubt, of the various boards, were very active in
various quarters; and, not to mention other places, the main street
of Hackney, for instance, for nearly a whole day, was by such means
rendered quite unbearable.
Four-and-twenty centuries ago, Hippocrates, the father of medicine,
gave to the world his celebrated treatise, _de aere, aquis et locis_
περι ὑδατων αερον και τοπων, having for its object an inquiry into the
influence of the external world on man’s physical structure and moral
nature. To trace the origin of disease to these circumstances, does not
seem to have fallen within the scope of his argument; accordingly,
it can scarcely be said that any author prior to Macculloch ever
considered this matter from a philosophical or physiological point of
view, a reason for which may be found, I think, in the absence of a
minutely accurate chemical analysis of natural and artificial products.
No Ehrenberg had taught mankind the wonders of the living microscopic
world of life; even the geology of Macculloch was much behind the
profound analyses of the present day. Sober thinking men had rejected
the bold speculations of Buffon as to the antiquity of life on the
globe, and the demonstrations of the immortal Cuvier were as yet but
partially admitted; whilst the theories of Lamark, respecting the vast
influence of life in the construction of the crust of the globe, had
been suffered quietly to fall into abeyance. Life was thought to be but
a recent acquisition by the earth; the Silurian and Cambrian systems of
fossils were either unknown or misunderstood. These fossils, at present
called “the first stages of this grand and long series of former
accumulations,” must, in the nature of things, yield their claims to
others which geology will no doubt soon discover, thus rendering more
than probable the theory that life and the globe are coeval.
Placed accidentally in a country usually considered as a focus or
centre of that malaria or influence, whatever it may be, which man,
correctly, perhaps, esteems as the source and cause of remittent and
intermittent fevers, I have thought it might prove a labour of some
utility to mankind to test the theoretical opinions to which I have
alluded, by an appeal to facts submitted to more refined analyses than
were known at the period of their promulgation. Time can only show in
how far the views I venture to substitute for those now in vogue fairly
represent the truth. A power of nature, invisible and impalpable,
harasses mankind, destroys armies,[8] desolates districts and
countries, slays adult man at the moment when his native land expects
from him a suitable return for all the labour, trouble, and expense
bestowed on him: to inquire into the nature of this poison is the
object, or at least the main object, of this work. If we would rightly
understand its essence and properties, it may be admitted that we
ought to study carefully in the first instance its manifestations and
effects; now these are tolerably well known. The most difficult part
of the inquiry remains, that is, the demonstration of the essential
nature of the poison or miasm giving rise to such disastrous results.
All modern science leads to the conclusion that malaria, whether it
originate in circumstances over which man has no control, despite
every hygienic effort, or emanate from a combination of circumstances
mainly caused by man himself, or be only effectual when it meets with
individuals living in contempt of common sanitary precautions, must, by
its material nature, be within the range of philosophical research. To
Schonbein, a distinguished chemist now alive, we owe the discovery of
ozone. Major Tulloch had already hinted at the doctrine that the cause
of the frightful mortality in tropical countries was to be looked for
in electrical conditions of the atmosphere, of whose nature we as yet
are ignorant.[9] Other discoveries in this direction are sure to follow
at no distant period. What so obscure a short time ago as electricity?
Now look at its position, at least, as a science of application! Life,
it is true, is the mystery of mysteries, equally so in its origin and
extinction; yet granting this to be a truth, and foreseeing in it all
the difficulties of every inquiry directed to elucidate its essential
nature, every reflecting mind must be struck with the remarkable
discoveries of modern times, all tending to show the close alliance
between the chemical and vital phenomena, an alliance wholly unknown to
the most gifted of antiquity. The modern world, right or wrong, looks
to chemistry for the solution of many great and important problems, the
most elevated of which unquestionably is the discovery of the causes
rendering certain wide-spread localities of this earth unfit for the
habitation of those at least who may not claim them as their natal
soil; of which they are not the aborigines.[10]
[8] The Walcheren expedition.
[9] Rapid changes in the barometric pressure of the atmosphere
strongly affect some persons, but the _malaise_ caused does not seem
to be of a permanent character. In the spring, in Britain, when
north-easterly winds prevail, the amount of skin disease, rheumatism,
neuralgia, &c., is sufficiently remarkable, and the blights they
cause in plants is a fact known to all. In a work published by
Mulder (“Water en Miht,” Amsterdam, p. 181), we find it mentioned
that Van Swinden investigated the mutations of atmospheric pressure
as a cause of sickness, and arrived at the conclusion that a low
pressure was not the cause of sickness and fever. He remarked that
although there had been many years in which much sickness prevailed,
seemingly connected with hot and dry weather, the barometer had
varied but little. Thus, at Haarlem, in the period between 1755 and
1780, the maximum was 30·9, the minimum or lowest, 28·0. The summer
of 1779 was extremely hot, and a fever epidemic appeared which
continued for three years. It was ascribed to the draining of several
polders. Several learned societies made reports on the subject of
this fever, but they elicited no new facts. It was generally agreed
that the deeper the mud and turf containing vegetable matter were
under water, the less was the sickness resulting from the draining.
A Mynheer Driessen called public attention to the circumstance that
on the coasts of Holland there were many places where animal and
vegetable matter had accumulated and was in a state of rottenness
or fermentation; and in this state he suggested that being carried
inland by strong westerly winds, it might give rise to sickness.
It is remarkable, however, that both the influenza and cholera
progressed against the prevailing westerly winds.
[10] Men in a state of nature seem to resist malaria. Thus the
natives of Newfoundland and of Canada generally, and indeed of all
America, withstood readily the malaria of their native land, but
perished when brought within the influence of European domesticity.
We must allow, however, for the power of race. On the other hand,
it seems almost certain that the old Roman armies withstood the
influence of climate much more effectually than modern armies do.
They lived generally in camps, which they themselves fortified. Of
their sanitary regulations we know nothing, but of their camps we
know that no English or French soldiers could possibly stand their
ground for any length of time similarly encamped. A legion (about
12,000 men) encamped on a space of 700 yards square; what became
of the refuse of the camp, and how was it disposed of? No Crimean
disasters ever happened to Cæsar; he could not afford to lose his
veteran Legions as we lost the Guards.