Second report on quarantine : yellow fever : with appendices / [by the] General Board of Health.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health
Date:
1852
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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.

    198/428 (page 188)
    Opinions of American Physicians. took place ; and, on returning on board, their liealth con- tiniied good. America. Passing now to the American continent, my limits admit but of a few brief remarks. Up to the year 1793, almost all the medical men in the United States were believers in the commu- nicable nature of Yellow Fever; but each epidemic diminished tlie numbers, so that, in 1825, according to an American com- mercial almanac, while 567 were against the doctrine of con- tagion, 28 only remained in favour of it, throughout the whole country. The public manner in which the celebrated Dr. Rush, once a believer in contagion, retracted his opinion, is matter of historical notoriety.* At New York the doctrine of contagion was long and ardently supported by Professor Hossack and Dr. Townsend, both of whom wrote much upon llie disease. The facts which presented themselves to Dr. Beck in the course of the epidemic at New York (1822), caused his public retractation of faith as to contagion in the following year ;t and Dr. Townsend appears to have admittedj that, of about 200 persons of all grades of the profession three or four only believed in the transmissible nature of Yellow Fever. In 1793 the profession were almost unanimous in the belief of its contagious character, and no little courage was •required to brave the storm an opposite opinion would have awakened. In this generation an equal unanimity prevails in the profession as to the non-contagious nature of the disease ; and he who advances the opposite doctrine seriously, is deemed no more worthy of notice, much less a refutation, than would be an advocate at this time of the Ptolemaic system.§ The following statement from the pen of M. La Roche, French consul at Philadelphia, is extracted from a letter to a friend, 20th July, 1830. A friend of mine. Dr. Morrel, has lately arrived from the Havannah. During a few days' passage three persons died of Yellow Fever on board; and a fourth, taken ill on board, died in the New York quarantine establishment. The sick loere all cabin passengers, and received the germs of the fever in the port. The other passengers, who merely em- * Dr. Rush, [quoted by Sir W. Pym, 1st Edit., p. 208] says He forgive- ness of the friends of science and humanity, if the publication of that opinion has had any influence in increasing the misery imAmortality attendant upon that disease. Indeed, such is the pain lie feels, in recollectiny that he ever entertained or propa- gated it, that it will long, and perhaps, alwai/s deprive him of the pleasure he might otherwise have derived, from a review of his attempts to fulfil the public duties of his situation. t New York Med. and Ph. Journ., No. viii., p. 472. See Addenda (S.), p. 238. X Chervin.—De I'Opiniou des Medecins Amc'ricains, p. 11. § Ses Amer. Journ. of Medical Sciences, August 1829, p. 523.