Plague : papers relating to the modern history and recent progress of Levantine plague / prepared from the time to time by direction of the president of the Local Government Board, with other papers ; sented to both House of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty.
- Radcliffe, Netten.
- Date:
- 1879
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Plague : papers relating to the modern history and recent progress of Levantine plague / prepared from the time to time by direction of the president of the Local Government Board, with other papers ; sented to both House of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
65/82 (page 59)
![69 report for all details, both as to the setiological connexion of facts in the case, and also as to the circumstances under which the intentions of the Quarantine Act had been frustrated. I have said that the outbreak which I have described was, so far as I know, un- paralleled in the experience of England. Indeed, anywhere on this side of the Atlantic, yellow fever is a rare phenomenon; and, on the few occasions when it has been epidemic in Europe, even the northmost latitude where it has been seen has been south, and almost invariably much south, of the southmost latitude of England. Five years Yellow fever ago, however, Erance was startled, as now England has been, by an outbreak of yellow ia 1861 at fever in a latitude where the disease had never before been epidemic—namely, at ^^^aire. St. Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire.* The Lords of the Council, as administrators of the Quarantine Act, had the facts of that occurrence brought before them—facts, in many respects, similar to those of our own outbreak, though the results were more complicated and more injurious. And I propose here to recount these facts ; pre- suming that the liabilities of England in the matter of yellow fever may for practical pm^poses be deemed identical with the liabilities of St. Nazaire; and contending, therefore, that our Swansea lesson may be made additionally suggestive when studied in the light of that second instance. The story, as I got it from the official communi- cations, was briefly this:—That about June 13 the Anne Marie, a wooden sailing vessel, loaded with cases of sugar, left Havannah, where yellow fever was epidemic ;— that between July 2 and July 12 attacks of yellow fever occurred on board; that on July 25 she arrived at St. Nazaire, where, 20 days having elapsed since the last death, and 13 days since the last case [attack] of illness, she was admitted to free pratique;—that till the 3rd of August she was being unloaded by labourers of St. Nazaire;—that many of these labom-ers were, on the 5th and 6th of August, attacked with yellow fever;—that previously (on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of August respectively) the mate of the Anne Marie who had remained on board, a cooper who had been employed to repair the cases, and a stone-cutter who had been working on the quay near to the Anne Marie,'' had been attacked with illness which, in at least the first two, was believed to be yellow fever;—that, moreover, on August' 1, the Chastan (which now was at Indret, but previously had been at St. Nazah-e, lying alongside the Anne Marie) had had a first attack of yellow fever, and that by Augusts all the five men who formed her crew had been attacked;—that, when the place of the Chastan beside the Anne Mat^ie was taken by the Dardanelles, a boy in charge of the Dardanelles (the only person on board her) contracted yellow fever; that the Cormoran which had been taking cargo from the Chastan while alongside the Anne Marie, had, after some days, two cases of yellow fever on board;—that a steamer of the Lorient Company, having remained two days in harbour near the Anne Marie, had, on returning to Lorient, two of her crew attacked with yellow fever;—that two hghters from Indret, having also remained two days near the Amie Marie, had after- wards then^ crews, seven or eight in number, attacked with a kind of half-yellow fever; '—finally, that an eighth vessel, the Arequipa, which had also remained for several days near the Anne Marie, and had on August 1 sailed for Cayenne, but been detained off the Erench coast by bad weather till August 5, had on August 5 a first attack of yellow fever, and had other attacks at intervals during the six or seven weeks foUowmg. It was aUeged, moreover, that while the above events were in progress certam oi the patients, being on shore at St. Nazaire and its neighbourhood, commu- nicated yellow fever to two or three, and slighter illness of the same kind to some others, of the persons who were about them; but, without going here into any minute discussion of these cases, I may state, as the conclusion to which a careful study of the official papers led me, that, in my opinion, it was only in a very qualified sense, if at all that communication of yellow fever by means of personal intercourse could be said to be proven by the cases.f The total mischief done by the outbreak was set * The latitude of St Nazaire is about 47° 17' N, which is some 4^ degrees south of Swansea The northmost place, where it had ever before been epidemic, in France is, I believrSilrt about'4r/N Por smouth m the state of New Hampshire of the United States represe^ I beW t^ most^ latitude at which it has ever been epidemic on the other side of th'e Atlantic ; the i;ti7ude name^^^^ t In one very important case (that of M. Chaillon) the sufferer is said not to have been near the shin but to have contracted the infection from certain labourers who came infected from the sW^ and whom he attended medically [' fiuctioned at their homes. In a second case, one of the ship labourersfwho himself had yellow fever, is said to have carried the infection certainly to his wife, and perhaos to .n nlJ n?„ i house he and his wife lodged ; for these two had attacks 'of yellow fev^rthfoldTan fat^^ Td thoulirft was notknown as a certainty' by M Melier that the old man had no^ been near the ' i Lem^ a^e^^^ that the woman had not been there. [H.M. Consul, Sir A. Perrier, eveutuaUy found re to beSeve](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24751388_0067.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
