Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/210

 causes, sufficiently notable to induce us to assign them to the operation of topical circumstances. It has already been observed, that there is no one prevalent trade that exerts any appreciable influence on the health of the community.

Hence it follows that we must content ourselves with making a few remarks upon some of the diseases which owe their origin to causes not peculiar to the place. Of these the most frequent are pectoral, gastric, and rheumatic affections.

Bronchitis has, in our experience, far surpassed in, frequency all other pulmonic maladies of an acute description. We are bound to attribute this fact, in a great measure, to atmospheric influence, though it is not easy to determine what condition of the air has a preference for bronchitis, over pneumonia or pleuritis, unless it be allowable to conclude that, while the former disease is, for the most part, the result of a morbid stimulant, directly applied to the mucous surface, the latter are more generally referrible to a causation, compounded of deranged sanguineous determinations and remote sympathies; not that we imagine bronchial inflammation to be exempt from these influences. If this be granted, it is not difficult to conceive of states of the atmosphere, of a chemical or specific character, which might be quite adequate to the excitement of bronchitic disorder, without those alterations of its temperature, which tend to disturb the equilibrium of the circulation, and to accumulate the blood in the parenchyma of the lungs, or to effect those derangements of the cutaneous function which provoke the irritability of serous membranes. Certainly pleurisy, more