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.

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    communicated to any individual vvitli whom thev bad intercourse. ^ The crew obtained, or took leave to pay frequent visits Irom the small island to the town of Porto Sal Kev where according to Dr. M'William, they resorted chiefly to tlie house of one Georgio, who kept a spirit store ; the (xrw?^'^'!^^^ ^'^'^^^^ considered by Dr M; William a remarkable one, appears to have been that this man (and - shortly afterwards two females who associated with them) was attacked with headache and general fever on the evening of the day he was visited by the^ ^.Clair's' people; a result which admits of a more obvious solution than tbe communication of febrile con- tagion on the part of persons who were themselves in perfect health. ■ The soiled linen of the officers and crew having been brought on shore on the first arrival of the vessel, was im- mediately given out to be washed to the waslierwomen of Porto Sal Rey, and the careful search made after these women, brought to light no fewer than seventeen persons who were so employed. r clothes, says Dr. King, linen, cotton, and flan- nel, which had accumulated in the officers' cabin from the time of their departure from Sierra Leone, were contained in at least 1^ bags, which were taken on shore at Porto Sal Rey the same evening the ship arrived, and distributed next morning (22nd August) to the washerwomen of the town. Now, if the disease possesses the power of reproduction, its poison must [according to general opinion] have been as certainly communicated through the medium of fomites as by direct contact with the sick on board or at the fort; yet none of the washerwomen nor any m their families were attacked with fever until November, showing an interval of 70 days after exposure to the in- lection. That it was not from any want of susceptibility to the influence of febrile poison that these women escaped the danger of this exposure to fomites was proved by subse- quent events ; for during the progress of the epidemic, all of these women, according to Dr. M'William, with only on« exception, were attacked with the prevailing fever; tvvo between six and seven weeks after the sailing of the Eclair ; five, two months ; two, three months; three, four months; and one, five months afterwards.