A memoir on contagion, more especially as it respects the yellow fever : read in convention of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, on the 3d of June, 1817 / by Nathaniel Potter, M.D.
- Nathaniel Potter
- Date:
- 1818
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A memoir on contagion, more especially as it respects the yellow fever : read in convention of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, on the 3d of June, 1817 / by Nathaniel Potter, M.D. 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.)
8/132
![t u ] convinced me that it, as well as the epidemick at Phila- delphia, were to be referred solely to domestick sources. On the 28th of October I addressed, to Dr. Rush, a se- cond letter, detailing more minutely, all the circumstan- ces connected with the epidemick on the Eastern Shore of this state. The letter concluded in the following words: These various forms of bilious fever, un- questionably owe their existence to the putrefaction of matters on the surface of the earth, after an uncom- monly wet spring, followed by the driest and hottest summer that can be remembered by the oldest inha- bitants of the country. Whatsoever may be the result of the controversy so warmly agitated in your city, res- pecting the contagion of the yellow fever, the epide- mick here has no pretensions to that character, in any of its forms. The dysenterick form is considered contagious by popular consent, but fmejudicej is no more entitled to the epithet contagious, than the remit- tent or intermittent fevers. With all possible defer- ence to your superior judgment, I cannot prevail upon myself to believe that any fever, arising from vegeta- ble decomposition, is contagious. The origin you have assigned to the epidemick fever of your city is the only one that is physically possible, and therefore you place your adversaries on equal ground with you, by acknow- ledging the fever contagious. Deny the existence of contagion as unphilosophicaU and you cut them off from every resource. If we admit one of the fevers from marsh effluvia to be contagious, we are bound, (apri- ore,J to admit them all to be so; intermittent, remit- tent, and dysenterick. In April, 1794, while Dr. Rush was committing to paper his thoughts on the epidemick of the preceding](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21148156_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
