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.

    137/428 (page 129)
    Willvig belief in Importation by the Ignorant. there was not. the least possibility of foreign introduction, and on the other, a number of people labouring under it have sometimes been landed in other places without injury to the health ot the inhabitants. >> . -r*. The only instance of public precautionary measures, say» Ur. Blair, being adopted under the impression that the epidemic dis- ease was contagious, was at Berbice, at Fort Cange. Captain War- burton, at the instance of assistant surgeon Turner, established a rl^id cordon, and prevented all intercourse with the town of New Amsterdam. Previous to this no case had appeared in the garri- son An effect of the cordon was to prevent huxters and others bring- incr in fresh provisions, fruit, &c., to the soldiers. The soldiers were also of necessity thrown on their own resources pour passer le temps. However, notwithstanding all communication having been cut off with the town, the Yellow Fever epidemic soon appeared in the garrison, and poor Dr. Turner fell a victim—not to the Yel- low *Fever, according to the practitioner who attended him, but— to inflammatory fever, the result of extreme fatigue, mental anxiety, and chagrin. The infractions, whether direct or open, say the Conrimittee of Physicians of Barcelona, «' of the strict cordon by which the place was surrounded, gave occasion to the people themselves to turn it into ridicule, bestowing upon it the most contemptuous epithets. The vexations experienced by those who quitted Barcelona, and the arbitrary measures adopted by each separate community, even in the highest mountains, against an imaginary contagion, were an insult to humanity, and a proof the most authentic of the igno- rance in which nations may be plunged by the vicious routine of sanitary [quarantine] laws. In'every clime, observes Humboldt, men fancy to derive consolation in the idea, that a disease which is considered pes- tilential has been brought from abroad. This belief flatters the national pride. To inhabit a country which produces epi- demics might be deemed a humiliating circumstance; and it is more satisfactory to consider that the malady is a foreign one, and that its breaking out has been merely the effect of an accident against which it will be easy to guard in another instance. The people immediately adopt this explanation of the origin of the disease, because it is easily comprehended. The medical men, on their side in general, rest satisfied with it, because the word importation relieves them from all responsibility, and from the trouble of investigating the nature and real cause of the disorder. From this has arisen that remarkable facility with which the doctrine of importation has been eagerly received by all classes when an epidemic manifests itself in a country; and a vessel, a traveller, or a parcel of goods arrive at the same time. So it is that thfe Havannah, Vera Cruz, and the sea-port towns of K