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.

    77/222 (page 57)
    own resources pour passer le temps. However, notwithstanding all communication having been cut off with the town, the yellow fever epidemic soon appeared in the garrison, and poor Doctor Turner fell a victim, not to the yellow fever, according to the practitioners who attended him, but to inflammatory fever, the result of extreme fatigue, mental anxiety, and chagrin.* * [Of the Inspectors-General of Hospitals who have served in the West Indies during the last forty years, amongst whom the respected names of Sir Charles Ker, Dr. Jackson, and Dr. Ferguson, are prominent, all have been persuaded that yellow fever, including its many varieties or modi- fications, is of local origin, and is not propagated by contagion, with the exception of one, Mr. Green, who was a strict contagionist, and who during the epidemic of 1819, a fever of wider range than is usual, acted accordingly, attempting even the enforcing of quarantine regulations, after the manner practised in the Mediterranean, where he had previously served, and had witnessed plague. The vexatious and futile character of these measures are not yet forgotten in Barbados. Before entering on an undertaking of the kind, even supposing the disease to be guarded against to be contagious, it would be well to consider the extent to which it is practicable. If the doctrine of contagion be false, how many are the evils unavoidable from the attempt to enforce quarantine : these are strongly exemplified in every account we have from eye-witnesses of the plague, comprised in panic, desertion of the living, neglect of the dead ; in brief, horrors on horrors, and even crimes on crimes. For those inquirers who are in doubt on the sub- ject,— that is, whether yellow fever is contagious or not,— it might be well to keep in mind Dr. Rush's reflections, made after he had given up his early opinion that the disease is contagious; in expressing which, he begs for- giveness of the friends of science and of humanity, if that opinion had any influence in increasing the misery and mortality attendant upon that disease. Indeed, such is the pain he feels in recollecting that he ever entertained or propagated it, that it will long and perhaps always deprive him of the pleasure he might otherwise have derived from a review of his attempts to fulfil tbe public duties of his situation. The early advocates of the contagious origin of yellow fever supposed that it was brought from Siam, the later contagionists have referred it to the western coast of Africa; proof is wanting of the correctness of either con- clusion. Pere Labat, whose work on the West Indies was published in 1738, states that the Mai de Siam, (the yellow fever of that period), was conveyed to Martinique in the Oriflamme, a vessel which came from Siam with the remains of the establishments attempted at Merguy and Bannock, and which touching at Brazil, got the malady there, where it had been destructive for seven or eight years. The African origin of yellow fever was proposed by Dr. Chisholm, he attributing a malignant fever which broke out in Grenada to contagion from the ship Hankey, which, in 1793, arrived from Boulama, having on board some of a party, who, under Captain Beaver, had attempted to establish a colony on that island, but without success, mainly owing to the ravages of fever, which, from the account of it by Captain Beaver, appears to have been different altogether in its character from the malignant yellow fever of the West Indies, such as it appeared before and since, and yet was strangely considered by Dr. Chis- holm a new disease.] — Ed.