Excerpt from The Retrospect of Medicine, Vol. 20: A Half-Yearly Journal, July-December, 1849

Dr. Williams further states, that the general laws observable in the actions of morbid poisons are for the most part precisely similar to those which govern medicinal substances, or only differ in a few minor points. These poisons have their specific actions, their periods of latency, while their phenomena equally vary accor ding to the dose, or the predisposition of the patient. That the poisons are specific is proved by the precision of their course, and of the pathological phenomena which each individually exhibit. Morbid poisons, also, have their periods of latency, the duration of the period varying in the different diseases induced by them. Thus, the poison of scarlet fever ordinarily lies latent from a few hours to ten days, of measles from ten to fourteen days, and of small-pox from sixteen to twenty days.

The chief distinctions between the morbid and the mineral poi sons consist, first, in the power which the former have of increasing within the system to a comparatively indefinite extent, and, secondly, in their specific effects being independent of the amount of the virus absorbed, a small dose producing as certain and as severe effects as a large one. Many of them, also, are capable of infecting persons at considerable distances, and of exhausting the susceptibility of the membrane diseased to any future attack. These peculiarities are possessed by the virus of scarlet fever, and will, therefore, be brie¿y considered.

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