Report on quarantine on the Southern and Gulf coasts of the United States / by Harvey E. Brown.

  • Brown, Harvey Ellicott, 1840-1889.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on quarantine on the Southern and Gulf coasts of the United States / by Harvey E. Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    phenomena, and investigation ceases just where it should have com- menced. Nevertheless, granting for the present that in some epidemics the fact of importation is not proved, yet in very many more the tes- timony is so strong that it must carry conviction to every unprejudiced mind that yellew fever has been brought into the country in the vast majority of cases in which it has appeared here epidemically, and that it has frequently been kept out by proper precautionary measures. I shall endeavor to show, before concluding this report, that the quar- : antine has failed to be always effective in the United States, not from any defect in the principle involved, but from insufficiency in most of the present laws and a want of their proper adminst.ration. EPIDEMICS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES. The question of the possibility of carrying the infection of yellow j fever by means of ships, and its introduction into localities where it : has no congenial home, is strongly illustrated by many of the visitations of the disease to other countries than our own. A full account of such foreign epidemics would fill too large a space, | and they are already so familiar to all students of the subject that only a brief allusion to them will be necessary; consequently I shall not en- deavor any complete description of them, but only of a few, the history ] of which have been carefully investigated by others, and afford addi- tional evidence of the portability of the disease. Ascension Island.—Ascension is a lonely island, situated many miles 1 from any other land; is in the South Atlantic Ocean, in latitude 7° 56' 1 south longitude 14° 25' west. On the 27th of March, 1823, the British sloop of war Bann left Sierra Leone, coast of Africa (where yellow fever j had been epidemic for some months,) for Saint Thomas, but the fever breaking out among the crew she was compelled to put into Ascension and land her sick. She arrived on the 27th of April, and by the 2d of j May had buried thirty-two men, at which date Her British Majesty’s j ship Driver arrived at Ascension. All intercourse between the garrison and the sick-tents of the Bann was forbidden, and as much as possible between the men of the Bann and those of the Driver. In a fews days an admiralty clerk, belonging to the Driver (sent on board the Bann to as- j sist at a survey) and Captain Sawmarez, and his servant (sent to join the Bann), were all seized with fever. About the same time the fever made its appearance among the j garrison ashore, in the family of a soldier’s wife who had been washing for one of the j Bann. It first seized a boy, and then the woman herself, and in a few days four men belonging to the garrison were attacked. Of the crew of the Bann, consisting of about j one hundred and thirty, not so many as ten escaped fever, and thirty-eight died, and on the island of Ascension, of the garrison, consisting of thirty-six souls, five only es- caped fever, and seventeen died, and of about eight from the Driver, exposed to the con- tagion, four were seized and died. (Report of Assistant Surgeon Sinclair, Her Majesty’s steamer Bann. quoted by Ferguson, London Medical Gazette, vol. 24, p. 840; Burnett’s Official Report of Fever on Her Majesty’s steamer Bann, pp. 3-26.) This was the first visit of yellow fever to the island, and it did not appear again until 1837, when it was carried by the brig of war Forres-1 j ter from Sierra Leone. The commanding officer of the brig died on the j passage, and his wearing-apparel and other effects were sold in the gar- rison. Soon after the yellow fever broke out in the command, and two officers and a number of men died. (Ferguson, op. cit., pp. 840—842.) The local circumstances which we have found so uniformly present in j other epidemics were not wanting, for a large mud-pit had been filled up during the season in the vicinity of the garrison, and this had been rendered unusually filthy by remarkably heavy rains.