Some account of the last yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / by Daniel Blair ; edited by John Davy.

Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some account of the last yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / by Daniel Blair ; edited by John Davy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    epidemic. Several ships which sailed from this port in the early period of the epidemic had cases occurring at sea, in which all attacked died. But it is probable there was compensation by previous cases of recovery. If the mortality of the temporary hospital be taken to represent the proportional deaths from the untreated disease, we must assume it at 29 per cent. The mortality of treated cases as educed from records of the present Seaman's Hospital, will give a full, or even an excessive, rate; for many cases were admitted in a hopeless condition, the medical practitioners in many instances making the hospital a receptacle for such cases as they feared would terminate fatally. Our epidemic, as has been stated of scarlatina, varied in intensity from a flea bite to the plague. The simplex cases represent the former lesion named in the quotation.* It will be well, therefore, to give the centesimal mortality of the epidemic as shown in the Seaman's Hospital from 1839 till its terminations/or each form or variety, as in the annexed table. Feb. Flava 51 it. Cases Feb. Flav. Grav. Total. Deaths. Rate of Mortality on Gravior. Rate of Mortal, on Gravior and Mitior. Feb. Flava Simpt Rate of Mortal, on all Cases. 439 1642 2071 404 24-60 19-51 961 133 * [The mortality, probably, in no two invasions of yellow fever will be similar. The following table shows the proportion per cent, of deaths, to the number of fever cases admitted in the military hospitals in Barbados, from 1816 to 1842. It may be proper to premise, that the terms remittent, com- munis continens, and icterodes, as commonly used, are hardly distinctive ; sometimes, according to certain preconceived ideas, one name being used, sometimes the other. Proportion per Cent, of Deaths to the Number admitted. Years. Intermittent. Remittent. Com. Con. Icterodes. 1816 8-07 23-72 1820 2-19 39 1821 982 21-56 1836 5-26 1838 5-40 2352 1841 4 54 83-33 1842 17-91 ]—Ed. t This form, as before stater], was noticed and recorded first in 1841. E
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