The yellow fever epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tenn. : embracing a complete list of the dead, the names of the doctors and nurses employed, names of all who contributed money or means, and the names and history of the Howards, together with other data, and lists of the dead elsewhere / by J.M. Keating.

  • Keating, John McLeod, 1830-1906
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The yellow fever epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tenn. : embracing a complete list of the dead, the names of the doctors and nurses employed, names of all who contributed money or means, and the names and history of the Howards, together with other data, and lists of the dead elsewhere / by J.M. Keating. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/468 (page 13)
    I. The Yellow Fever, or, as Dowell prefers to term it, febns typhis icterodes, or febris cum nigro vomito, the fievre jaune of the French, and negro vomito of the Spanish, was known to the Caribs, according to Breton, who wrote in 1655, by the French equivalent of coup de barre, expressive of the muscular pains of the fever, as if produced by blows from a stick. Like Asiatic chol- era and the small-pox, it is assigned to that class of diseases known as xyinotic (from xi/ma, the Greek word for yeast). These diseases are produced by in- visible germs floating in the atmosphere, which, taken into the blood through the lungs, are afterward propagated by the excreta and invisible emanations of the patients. The yellow fever is claimed by some to have originated and to have prevailed epidemically* in Africa, though Cortez found it prevailing in Mexico, to whose people it was known by the name of matzlazahuatl; and the Indians of San Domingo and other West India Islands were decimated by it before and soon after the discovery of America. It is unknown in Asia, Australia, or tlie islands of the Pacific; and it was unknown to Europe until after the discovery of America by Columbus. Dowell says that it was un- doubtedly introduced from Africa to America [he does not say when, nor does he tell us why, if it is an African fever, the negroes in this country are so largely exempt from it]; that it existed in Africa, eastern Asia, and southern Europe, long before the. establishment of the Greek and Roman empires, is generally well established by Hertado, even running back a thou- sand years before Christ; that it has now become endemic along the coasts of Africa—both east and west—as well as in the West Indies imd northern coast of South America, no one doubts [and he ought to have added the * Epidemic diaeaacs are tliose which attack nt the Rame time a great number of peo- ple, depending on Rorris temporary accidental and generally inappreciable cause: difTer- ing, in this respect, from endemic diseases, or those developed under the influence of some constant or periodic cause. Many diseases, ordinarily sporadic, may become epi- demic (as yellow fever) under certain ill-understood conditions; or some new disease, inlruduccd by contagion or other favorable circumstances, may spread epidemically.