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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    epiclemic) with the ' Dygden,'—and no other vessel has been , pointed at,—I find not only that it completely fails to make out even a jjvima facie case, but also, from the whole complexion of the evidence, I am convinced that the story of Fenic's visit to that vessel on the lOth of August is, from beffinniiiff to end, a labricatiou. 6 5. Apparently in anticipation of a failure to connect the illness in Fenic's family with a foreign source, much testimony was given before the Board derived, as is stated by Mr. Howell, through channels most impure, about instances in which foul clothes are supposed to have been brought ashore by sailors arriving from the Havannah,in the early part of the epidemic, and which foul clothes infected the washerwomen. After showing at some length the discrepancies and contradictions which proved the whole testimony adduced on this point to be utterly worthless, Mr. Howell says :— Here I leave the journals of washerwomen, and the tattle of their gossips, remarking this fatal objection to each washing-tub anecdote, however circumstantial, that not one of them goes hack so far as to precede, and therefore to account for, the alleged first case of the epidemic, namely, that of Salvador Fenic, who, as we are told, fell ill on the llth of August, and upon whose single case, therefore, the proof of importation rests. And if the attempt to connect the illness of Salvador Fenic with a foreign source be, as I hold it to be, a complete failure, how is the illness of the boy Caffiero to be accounted for? And to what is to be ascribed the ill ness of Mr. Alartin's child on August 16th, a case quite as early as that of Caffiero, and which has not been attempted to be traced to importation ? not one of the washing-tub cases being anterior either to that of Mr. Martin's child or to that of Caffiero, both of which are unquestioned cases of the epidemic. It was essential to the proof of the connection of the Dygden with the outbreak of the epidemic, to esta- blish the fact of the existence of Yellow Fever on board the ship. No proof of this appears to have been adduced.* On the contrary the captain of the ship declares that no such disease existed on board ; the head of the Quarantine department, after an official examination into the fact, affirms that there is no evidence whatever to disprove the trutii of the captain's statement, and the Quarantine Medical Officer, after a minute inspection of the ca])tain