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.

    174/428 (page 166)
    Cases ill the 4.ord Reghnent. . I interests of humanity, the SuiDcrintendcnt of Quarantine as president, should have assumed the right in several instances of selecting the witnesses, which obviously prejudiced the question, and by which much of the truth was intercepted. _ Several medical officers of the garrison who had much expe- rience respecting the progress of the epidemic, were either not examined at all, or only in a very imperfect manner. I was among the latter, being surgeon to the 43rd Regiment, and present during the whole epidemic. After a very limited examination, I officially informed the President, by letter, that I had much to state ; but like others, I was not called afterwards. From what I felt due to the service of which I had been a member for so many years, as well as the cause of truth, I was induced to protest against such proceedings, which protest will, I presume, be found with the documents connected with the inquiry forwarded from Gibraltar to the Colonial Office In addition to Mr. Howell's observations upon the evidence of the witness Catalina Fenic, I think it well to state, that this woman having been cited on the 14th November, 1829, before a public Notary at Gibraltar, deposed as to the falsehood of the report that her children had visited the ship Dygden.* loii^^-^ mention that on my arrival in the West Indies in 1801, the progress of Yellow Fever, to a frightful extent, in Martmique and Dominique, among the newly arrived regiments only, I did not fail to convince me that all those under whom I was acting, were right in not considering it a contaaious disease ; the idea was never harboured, nor ever discussed,so plain and obvious were the facts.| With regard to the Gibraltar epidemic of 1828, I am able to state, that m the 43rd regiment, the admissions of Yellow Fever cases commenced on the 12th September, and though, between that day and the 29th September, 43 cases were treated, no hospital attendant was taken ill. The first day an hospital servant was attacked was on the :JOth September, his employ- ment that of cook, and his duties unconnected with the wards or the sick; he slept in a kitchen. The waterman fell ill whilst following his employment, that of bringing water from a distance, and his duties never took him into the wards. It was not till this period, that the southern district, in which there are about 173 houscs,§ and where the hospital, containing the sick of six regiments, was situated,]] became affected by the noxious emanations which prevailed. What took place See Addenda (H.), p. 223. f See Appendix No. IV, p. .381. + 1 0 my great astonishment, says M. Dariste, wlio had been in the West Indies a great many years, I found, on my return to my country, that the question as to the contagious property of the Yellow Fever was warmly agitated