A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases: with the principal phenomena of the physical world, which precede and accompany them, and observations deduced from the facts stated ; in two volumes (Volume 2).
- Noah Webster
- Date:
- 1799
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases: with the principal phenomena of the physical world, which precede and accompany them, and observations deduced from the facts stated ; in two volumes (Volume 2). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![fever, which appear, at different periods, in the Weft-Indies. The firaple truth, is, that in ordinary feafons, when no peftilen- tial conftitution of air exifts, the fever of the Weft-Indies, is not contagious. It attacks ftraHgers with violence and deftroys life, but is not communicable per fe. Hence the authors who have written on the fubjeft are correft, in afferting this ordinary fever, not to be contagious. But after catarrh has pervaded the hemifphere, and during the increafe of mortality in the Levant, in Europe and on the Amer- ican continent ; that is, during a peftilential ftate of air, the fe- ver of the Welt-Indies affumes double malignity, and becomes contagious. In years of health, the difeafe rarely attacks natives of the iflands ; but in unhealthy periods, not only native whites, but even blacks are fometimes affeded with the difeafe. Among thefe however it is lefs deftrudlive. Thas we folve the problem which has embarraffed all the med- ical writers on the yellow fever, the moft able of whom have been compelled to declare that the fever in the Iflands is fometimes contagious, and at other times, not. This view of the fubjeft would have prevented the trouble of authors who have labored to prove the difeafe imported from Siam, or the African coaft.—Dr. Chiiholm, inflead of attempting to trace the Grenada fever of 1793 to Africa, through the fhip Hankey, had only to remark, the prevalence of the catarrh in 1790, of the plague in Egypt in 1791, and of the fcarlatina in the United States in 1793, and he would have fecn the begin- ning of a moft extenfive and malignant feries of difeafes. The truth is, the peftilential ftate of air firft manifefted itfelf in Gre- uada in 1791, [the year it commenced in New-York] by new andfingular fymptoms, which furprifed Dr. Chifholm. And this, by the way, was before the beginning of the prefent war, OH the part of Great-Britain, and of courfe, it could not be af- cribed to that circumftance. The fame faft, when juftly confid- ered, is demonftration, that the difeafe was not brought from Africa. It muft be remarked however, thaf the fever of the tropical Vol. JI. K](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21163212_0081.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
