The climate and diseases of America / by Johann David Schoff ; translated by James Read Chadwick.

  • Schöpf, Johann David, 1752-1800.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climate and diseases of America / by Johann David Schoff ; translated by James Read Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    sei’ved, and moreover scarcely anything is known of the common skin diseases which used to be laid to its account ; when affections of the skin have occurred, they have invariably been produced and kept up by a neglect of external cleanliness. The troops prefer salt pork to boiled beef, or even fresh meat, and soon tire of the latter especially. Fevers with eruptions are rare, at least in the army. In nearly four years I have had but two patients with eruptions like the purples. Small-pox loses much of its attendant horror and danger from the -general inocula- tions.^ As there are always some cases of small-pox in New York, partly in the natural and partly in the modified form, it has gradually become the custom to inoculate all the prisoners and renegades who come here and have not had the disease, and that, too, without re- spect to age or season. There are very few instances, I might almost say none, of any ill effect from inoculation. I have heard trustworthy 1 Inoculation with small-pox matter was introduced into Boston, at the instance of Cot- ton Matlier, by Zabdiel Boylston in 1720, “who began to inoculate at the risk, not only of his practice, but even of his life. The friends and enemies of the practice filled the newspapers of the day with arguments for and against it. The whole of the influence which the learn- ing and piety of the New England clergy has always given them was exerted; and the whole of it was necessary to induce his hearers to consent to inoculation. The practice by degrees extended from New England to New York and Philadelphia, and finally to Charles- ton, where it was partially adopted in 1738, and afterwards became general in 1760.” (A Review of the Improvements, Progress, and State of Medicine in the XVIIIth Century. Da- vid Ramsay, M. D. Charleston. 1800.) Small-pox was rife in Boston during the occupancy of the British troops (1776). On July 3d, orders were given for a general inoculation of the inhabitants and troops. General Washington was inoculated in New York on June 27, 1776. (Solomon Drowne, M. 1)., of Rhode Island, to Miss Sally Drowne.) “ Gen. Hosp., N. Y., July 13, 1776. “ I am glad our Assembly have allowed of Inoculation, and hope you and Brother Bill will not defer receiving that disease (y<^ S. Pox) which taken by chance have proved the Bain of tens of Thousands ; when it comes so near you, cloathed in gentleness, — all its Ter- ribleness cast aside.” (New York during the American Revolution.) The New York Packet for June 27, 1776, has the following item : “ Williamsburg, Virginia, .Tune 1.6. We learn from Gloucester that Lord Dunmore has erected hospitals on Gnyon’s Island ; and that his friend Andrew Sprawle is dead, and that they are inoculating blacks for the small-pox. Ilis Lordship, before the departure of the fleet from Norfolk Harbor, had two of these wretches inoculated and sent ashore, in order to spread the infection, but it was happily prevented.” In December, 1779, Mrs. General Riedesel took her children to the country-scat of General ( linton, near New York, for the ])urpose of having them inoculated. “Carolina lost her whooping-cough, but immediately after it came back and lasted a whole j-ear.” (Riedesel.)
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