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.

    41/468 (page 33)
    no instance of its ever having been imported being as yet well proved. The table, be it understood, represents only the,cases and deaths at the Charity Hospital for the years resjiectively mentioned: YKARS. TOTAL CASES. DEATHS. YEARS. TOTAL CASES. DEATHS. 1822^' . 66/ 1836 6 5 1823 1824 1 1 lo6/^ 167 108 1838 22 17 1825 99 49 1839® . \ '. 1,086 452 1820 24 5 1840 3 3 1827 1828 372 109 1841* . 1,114 594 290 130 1842* . 425 211 1829 436 215 1843® . 1,086 487 1830 256 117 1844* . 169 83 1831 3 2 1845 1 0 1832» . 18 26 1846 146 96 1833« . 422 210 1847* . . 2,479 895 1834» . 150 95 1848* . . 1,226 420 1835^» . 605 284 1849 1,055 645 Total, . 12,913 6,332 It thus appeal's that during these twenty-eight years there were thirteen epi- demics in New Orleans, and at least five other seasons of heavy mortality from yellow fever when it did not please the authorities to declare an epidemic. It will be seen that there was not a single year in which the yellow fever did not appear at the Charity Hospital, and that the average number of deaths annu- ally from that cause Avas more than 200. The author of this article in De Bov) argues from the statistics of the year 1853, and from those of all the preceding 3'ears as far back as 1822, that the yellow fever is indigenous to New Orleans, and that it depends upon purely local conditions from year to year whether or not it will become epidemic. All accounts agree—and he quotes copiously from the contemporaneous press—that the sanitary conditions in 1853 were unusually and unprecedentedly bad; that at no time within the memory of man had the streets been as filthy and the policing of the city as negligently and criminally mismanaged. To these causes is attributed the frightful mortality of 1853 as compared with other years. Strengthening these conclusions, Dr. Simonds, of New Orleans, declared (and gave the figures to prove) that the yellow fever was treated in the Charity Hospital every year for thirty years, up to 1849. So, as Dowler says, that the stream of yelloAV fever, with whatsoever of contagion it may possess, is uninterrupted, no year having been wholly ex- empt in this institution, not to name the city at large. The commission appointed by the Board of Health of New Oileans, in 1853, to inquire into the origin, propagation, or mode of transmission of the then late epidemic of yellow fever,—sewerage, quarantine, and the sanitary condition of that city,—after a long and laborious investigation, reached the same conclusion. They say that yellow fever is not a disease personally contagious; that its infectious properties are only communicable in a foul or infectious atmosphere; that is, that a foul vessel or individual with the disease will only ]irojiagate it under atmospherical and local conditions similar to that which furnished its na- * The years marked (*) are those in which the fever was declared epidemic.