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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    Reports of Mr. Hartle on Antigua. So powerful were Dr. Bone's convictions before his departure from the West Indies, that, with a view to impress the truth on the minds of all those concerned, he sent a formula for the pro- duction of Yellow Fever, to the Army Medical Board,* of which the following is an abstract,— Take of soldiers lately arrived in the West Indies f any number; place them in barracks in a low, wet situation, or in the mouth of a gully, or on the brink of a dry river, or on the summit of a mountain, and to leeward of a swamp, or of un- cleared ground, and where there is no water, or only bad water; let their barracks be built of boards, or of lath and plaster, &c. [Here follow a variety of other circumstances.] Let these directions be attended to in Trinidad, or even in Bar- bados, and especially when the air is stagnant, or charged with noxious vapours subsequent to long drought, the soldiers Avill soon die, some of them yellow, some of them with black vomit. In Dr. Blair's late work on Yellow Fever edited by Dr. Davy, 1850, p. 55, we also find a formula for giving that disease to nurses:— The way to give a Yellow Fever nurse the Yellow Fever was not by bringing him in close contact with the sick, but by discharging him or her from the hospital. After knocking about town for a few weeks and getting into the malarial districts, they would, it is likely, be brought to ho&pital as yellow fever patients. Several nurses discharged for bad conduct suiFered in that way. I cannot pass over the oflicial statements of Mr. Hartle, Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals, who served in the West Indies, during a period of more than 30 consecutive years. His report for 1822 contains particulars of a most interesting kind, relative to the introduction of many cases of the Yellow Fever into the island of Antigua: in one place he remarks, It is a pleasing reneetion, and a source of great gratification to me, are equally affected by them. Wherever they prevail the old inhabitants of a country suffer as much as those that have arrived lately. But this is never the case in the Yellow Fever, remittent fever, or even intermittent fever, for such as are seasoned to the country or climate suffer infinitely less than new comers. But what may be considered as an experimeiitum crucis, to prove the non- existence of contagion is, when the sick leave their usual residence, and go to other situations which are healthy, without spreading the disease. This constantly hap- pens in the remittent fevers of the West Indies; for the good effects of changing the air of the towns for that of the mountains is so well Icnown that it is very gene- rally practised; but, certainly, without the slightest suspicion of any mischief arising from any contagion carried by the sick. , When disease arises from a cause generally diffused, separation fi'om the sick does not avail. Thus, ships of war have gone into a harbour in the West Indies, and have had no intercourse with those on shore, or witli the cre\vs of other ships, and yet in a few days the men have been seized with the prevailing fever in great numbers. If these observations be applied to remittent or Yellow Fever there will be no ground for believing either to proceed from contagion. * Report of the epidemic in Trinidad, 1818. f See Appendix, No. IV., p. 381.