Tableau of the yellow fever of 1853 : with topographical, chronological, and historical sketches of the epidemics of New Orleans since their origin in 1796, illustrative of the quarantine question / by Bennet Dowler.

  • Bennet Dowler
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tableau of the yellow fever of 1853 : with topographical, chronological, and historical sketches of the epidemics of New Orleans since their origin in 1796, illustrative of the quarantine question / by Bennet Dowler. 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.)

    14/76
    CHAPTER II. HISTORICAL NOTES OF YELLOW FEVER TO THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 1797. I have found no satisfactory record of an epidemic in New Orleans in 1797.* aep a. jn Philadelphia 1000, and in Providence 45 died of yellow fever. In the remote Providence. * New Design. West, at New Design, fifteen miles from the Mississippi river, and twenty from St. Louis, it carried off more than one-fourth of the inhabitants, although no person during the preceding twelve months had come to this village from any place at which the malady prevailed. As these facts are attested by Dr. Watkins, who had seen the disease in Philadelphia, and as identity of disease supposes an identity of cause, it is shown indisputably that fevers with the pathognomonic features of typhus icterodes [yellow fever] do occur in positions which forbid the assumption of importation. (Stat. Report, U. S. Army, 9.) 1798. The yellow fever which appeared in Boston, was, according to Dr. Samuel Dr. Brown. Brown; preluded by and accompanied with the following gloomy appearances of nature, or rather brown studies of the author, who [gravely sets forth that The common atmosphere, for the most part, was opaque and smoky, as if the earth's surface were undergoing a slow combustion. It seemed a heterogeneous mixture of particles in a state of opposition and propulsion; respiration frequent and unrefreshing. The sun, in mid-day height, appeared as a volume of blood, dark and angry. As it declined to the western horizon, its diameter widened greatly; and at an hour's height, or more, was almost invisible, or shrouded as with sack cloth. These ap- pearances, however, were not constant. In New York the epidemic raged with extraordinary mortality. It has been estimated that more than one in thirty of the entire population died in a few weeks, mostly in August. Epidemics in Philadelphia, Wilmington, New London, Chester, Huntington, Petersburg, Alexandria, (Va.) West Indies. 1799. The prevalence of yellow fever in New Orleans, in 1799, is referred to in the city journals twenty years subsequently. New Orleans. Dr. Dow informed me, says Dr. Rush, in his visit to Philadelphia, in the year 1800, that the natives and old citizens of New Orleans, who retired into the country during the prevalence of yellow fever in that city, the year before, [1799] were often effected by it, while all such persons as did not change their residence escaped it. (Rush, Inq., iv, 126.) 1800. Charleston, Philadelphia: In no year since the prevalence of the fever was the desertion so general. (Rush, iv.) Boston, New York, Vera Cruz, West Indies Cadiz: Persons long resident in the city, as well as West Indians, were remarkably exempt. General alarm in Europe, particularly in Spain, France, and •It Victor Debouchel, in his history of Louisiana-1841-aays that yellow fever desolated New Orleans in the following years, namely: 1767, 1797, 1802, 1806, 1810, 1814, 1818, 1822, 1824, 1827 1831, 1835, 1837—an enumeration which does not, in a number of instances, coincide with the most reliable authorities.