Second report on quarantine : yellow fever : with appendices / [by the] General Board of Health.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report on quarantine : yellow fever : with appendices / [by the] General Board of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    102/428 (page 94)
    Causes of Virulence of Fever in the Eclair^ description of the disease in the medical journal of th ship, and by post-mortem examination. In opposition to this generally-received opinion, how- ever. Sir William Pym promulgated a statement that, m addition to the common African fever, the celebrated novapestis of Dr. Chisholm had been introduced into the vessel ])y a passenger taken on board at Sierra Leone; this disease being, as he represents, a fever sui generis, known by the name of the African, Bulam, Yellow, or Black Vomit Fever, attacking the human frame but once, and differing from the common remittent fever in being highly contagious. That the doctrine on which Sir William Pym's asser- tion rests met with little countenance from medical authorities is apparent from the statement of Sir liam Burnett, who says :— The whole of this, as regards the peculiar properties of the disease, called by Sir William Pym, Bulam, &c., is a gratuitous assumption on his part, and, in my opinion, has no foundation in fact; and in my view of this part of the subject I am supported by nineteen twentieths of the medical officers of both services who are of opinion with myself that the more ardent form of Yellow Fever is a mere modification of the bilious remittent* so extensively known all over the tropical regions. He adds : The fever which prevailed in the ' Eclair,' was unquestionably a remittent fever, originating in marsh miasmata, and the exposure of the men in boats during rainy weather. The true yellow fever, says Mr. Watson, of Port Royal, Jamaica, is, in point of fact, of rare occurrence in this place, in an epidemic form. Fevers make their appearance from the deadly black-vomit pestilence, to the innocent ephemeral paroxysm, so blended and shading off from the most fatal to the least so, as to require the treatment to be equally varied. Diseases which for the first day or two have seemed trifling cases of common fever, have frequently all of a sudden assumed the most lethal aspect of yellow fever, and hurried their victims to the grave in a few hours. Dr. King and Dr. Stewart, in official Reports upon this case, state their concurrence with Sir William Burnett. Dr. McWilliam, on the other hand, is of opinion that the disease, though primarily an endemic * In confirmation of this asserlion of Sir Wm. Burnett, and in opposition to the statement {See p. 12G), that Intermittents are unknown in Gib- raltar, we subjoin the following :— Ketdbn