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
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.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![occurred per week. These cases evidently oriL^inated in the city. But later in the season a fresh wave approached Iroin the direction of i\Iexico, appearing in a violent form in Indianola, Galveston, and New Iberia, and, lastly, iu New Orleans, where it appeared in a severe form and in increas- ing ratio, although the weather was of the kind considered unfavorahle to its propagation. This was the general history of the disease. It fixed upon a place and ran its course, increasing in a definite ratio, declining in the same way, and finally disappearing, but, lor the time boing, aflecting all who were subject to attack and exposed to its influence. Debility and other reasons render some persons more susceptible than otliers to the pecu- liar poison; but this is the case with all diteases. Dr. P. V. .Schenck, of St. Louis, in an exhaustive treatise, published during the epidemic of 1(S78, also upholds the wave theory. He says: Yellow' fever is an infec- tious disease, but it is neither miasmatic iior contagious. The poisen of yellow fever is not generated in the human system; it is generated exter- nally; it attacks persons, and may be carried in vessels and trunks; lor tb.e presence of the disease an imported germ, or descendant f)f an imported germ, is necessary. The old discussions which have so long disturbed the profession are at an end, and the mind will lie no longer swayed like a pendulum be- yond the point of a stable equilibrium. Even when the Eoyal Academy of ]\Iedicine were undergoing a lively debate; and when Dr. Chevrin was on his six years' journey of investigation; and when Drs. Pym and Bryson, of England,were quarreling over the facts in the Bann and Eclair cases; Avhile the stupid Health Board of England were ti-ying to break down quarantine; while old Dr. Hosack, of this country, was venting his wrath on those who believed in non-contagion, 'as juniors in knowledge and in years, and as the unfledged opinion and speculations of men of the closet, who have had but few ojsportunities to test them at the bedside,'—even then, if you will carefully examine the facts, you will find it to be impossible, out of the many old epidemics, to affirm of any one of them that it had Ijeen intro- duced by contagion. Bancroft has brought a mass of testimony and fact upon this subject. Dr. Porter, w'ith his vessels, meets in mid-ocean with an infected vessel: his officers and crew intermingle, and they leave unharmed. A vessel lying at Havana, surrounded by infected vessels, in front of an infected city, is unharmed. The fourteen men who went to New York from Governor's Island, visited in the most thickly and filthy portions of that city; nine of them died, yet none of the citizens took the disease—indeed, so far as known, no case is on record in which a person having the disease in a pre- viously healthy quarter, has become the starting point of a local epidemic. In yell(jw fever we meet with a non-contagious disease; the living person, though sick, will not propagate it —it is not re])roduced in his system; the disease is of exotic origin, and, in order to become epidemic, it must be carried by the wave. It has its periods of rest and of activity. It travels three times as fast in tropical regions as it does higher up. It may hiber- nate, and resume its march the summer following; it may take one-half of a city this, and finish its work the next summer. It travels at the rate of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21354017_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
