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.)

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    the country. Among thousands of these, it would be not surprising that fourteen should die of all kinds of fever in six months, if no epidemic had existed, and if the entire race had been insusceptible to yellow fever. In round numbers the total mortality had been 2,500—that from yellow fever about 2,000—during the period above indicated, in which fourteen blacks, many of whom were infants, died of fevers of all varieties, in a black population of 30,000* Had these deaths all been from yellow fever, they would not,so far as this worst of epidemics goes, affect the argument that while the black race is susceptible to yellow fever, if born out of the city, death is, from this disease among them, a very rare occurrence; a majority of city practitioners never, perhaps, saw a single fatal case. The Necropolis of New Orleans represents all the fundamental types, if not every variety of the human races, Caucasian, American, Asian and African—all of which except the latter—become the ready victims of yellow fever, the creolized excepted. I have seen, in the same day, the copper-colored American from the low lands of the Mississippi and the Scandinavian from the icy mountains of Norway, dying of the epidemic. The Indian race is equally susceptible as the white race to yellow fever, although some writers have denied this.f Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans, formerly of Natchez, in his account of yellow fever in the latter city in 1823, published in the Medical Recorder, says five of the aboriginal inhabitants, belonging to the Choctaw tribe, came into the city during the prevalence of the epidemic, and afterward encamped two miles from the city; four took the disease, three men and one squaw. They were most barbarously burnt, [by themselves as a cure.] The squaw was covered with large ulcers, pro- duced by fire, from the pubis to the chin, and was writhing and groaning by the side of her grave, which the well Indian had dug to put her into, as he had prognostica- ted her death; but the men bore their pain in sullen silence and with savage fortitude disdaining to disgrace themse^eSjas men and warriors, by imitating the groans of the squaw, but applied to their own skins the lighted spunk, nor seemed to feel its corroding fire. Soon after the discovery of America, indubitable records show that the Indians of St. Domingo and other islands were desolated by the yellow fever.$ The late Noah Webster has shown that this disease prevailed amon the Indians of New Eng- land, in 1618 and in 1746, and at other periods. Races. Indians. Choctaw. CHAPTER X. METEOROLOGICAL TABLEAU OF THE SUMMER OF 1853. It is not intended to give the special meteorology of New Orleans during the year 1853. It is impossible to connect the temperature of any locality with yellow fever, so that the appearance of a known degree of heat or rain, will invariably prelude or cause the appearance of that malady. Although the yellow fever zone * The total colored population by the city census of 1852 was 29,174. never yet heard of an instance of real yellow fever prevailing among the copper-colored race, or American Indians. t Breton, in his dictionary of the Carib language (1655) explains the Indian word for yellow fever literally coup de barre, one of the names adopted by DuTestre and others, expressive of the muscular pains of yellow fever, as if produced by blows from a stick. [De Jonnes Monog. 4L] 1833.