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.

    121/428 (page 113)
    In a despatch, dated George Town, 27tli January, 1852, giving an account of the progress of this epidemic, Dr. Gavin states, that the present outbreak shows that Yellow Fever, like Cholera, returns not only to precisely the same localities, but even to the same houses ; and that iinmunity from the disease may be, to a great extent, guaranteed by the avoidance of the infected localities. Hitherto, he says, under this instruction [avoidance of infected localities], the white troops have remained perfectly free from disease. Nothin? can more clearly mark the influence of localizing causes in the development of this disease than the facts in relation to the present epidemic. The parties upon whom the mortality has almost withoiat an exception fallen, have been those who have been Hving, or who have remained for a determinate period in the foulest localities of the town, and by the river side— locahties notoriously known as sinks of filth and impurity [see p. 45]. The disease has fallen almost entirely on the European sailors, in certain moorings, and on the Portuguese, who live in the a:reatest filth, and whose shops and premises abound in the most offensive impurities. Comparatively few English inhabitants have been attacked, and those who have, dwelt in the very midst of the localities proved by experience to be the most offensive and dangerous, in such circumstances as the present, to newly-arrived Europeans. We have already adverted to the testimony that at Boa Vista, in addition to other proofs of the presence of a stagnant and pestilential atmosphere, Ihere was the evi- dence derived from the prevalence of unusual sickness and mortality among domestic animals. That the common air, says Dr. King, which was inhaled by every living thing on the island was in an epidemic condition in the months of October, November, and December of both years, is sufficiently demonstrated by the simultaneous occurrence of uni- versal sickness and great mortality among the cattle (including horses, cows, mules, donkeys, and goats) at the very time that fever was raging among the inhabitants. And, further, there was this remarkable coincidence, that after an interval of some months and the disappearance of the disease both in man and beast, the same fever broke out again in the towns and villages about the rainy season of the following year, and was again accom- panied by the same murrain among the cattle, which in the two seasons proved fatal to two-thirds of the whole stock of the island. We submit that these considerations afford all the I