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.)

    59/76
    not consistent. By what code of morality can they justify themselves in dispensing with quarantine in any case like the following example taken from the Daily Delta, of September 13th, 1853? Capt. Baxter's statement as given by the Editor: Captain Baxter left here [ New Orleans, ] with the Cherokee on the 12th August last, when the epidemic was at its height, with one hundred and sixty- nine passengers, the majority of whom were unacclimated, and liable to the yellow fever. During the voyage, there were ten of the crew down with the fever, and on the arrival of the Cherokee in New York, there being two still sick, they were ordered into the hospital, where one of them died; the other recovered. Were the crew, and passengers, (without mentioning the ship and cargo) kept 40 days in the Lazaretto, undergoing fumigation ? Not at all. Captain Baxter adds: K They were all permitted to land in New York after eighteen hours, and the sick members of the crew were alone compelled to go into hospital detention. Such a quarantine is but a kaleidoscopic illusion. If the New York authorities entertained the belief that yellow fever is contagious, they would not, in this strongest possible case of importation, have wilfully exposed the lives of half a million of people, unless they are worse than pirates themselves. Their acts more than their words, show that they have no belief in quarantine as a preventive of yellow fever. The same infidelity is obvious in the actions of the few contagionists in New Orleans. They no more avoid yellow fever patients than they do rheumatic patients, or charity. They are better than their doctrine. As yellow fever appeared in New Orleans at an unusually early period of the season, and long before its invasion of other towns in the Southern slope of the Mis- sissippi valley, the town authorities, in many cases, imposed quarantine laws for their protection, early in August, as Natchez, Bkton Rouge, etc. No exemption- great mortality—neglect of the sick—and other evils followed,—some of which grew directly out of quarantine itself, and were by no means creditable to humanity. While experience shows that quarantines do not prevent yellow fever, they do pre- vent free intercourse with the sick, nursing, attendance, and the physical comforts, by which the disease can alone be combatted with the greatest success. Fortunate- ly, however, humanity is usually stronger than quarantine in practice ; non-inter- course, seclusion and abandonment, which quarantine directs, or necessarily implies, are too revolting to the moral sense to be practiced towards friends, neighbors and relatives, and consequently, in yellow fever, these not being carried out in practice, quarantine will always be violated, until morality and charity shall be extinguished. If quarantinists are sincere they ought not to export any cotton (one of the articles in which contagion is most easily transmitted) because the contagion is in the city every year. A learned physician of New Orleans, Dr. Simonds, has pub- lished a table showing the annual per cent, of mortality in the Charity Hospital, from yellow fever, in every year for thirty years, ending with 1849-so that the stream of yellow fever, with whatsoever of contagion it may possess, is uninter- rupted, no year having been wholly exempt in this institution, not to name the city at large. (Dr. Fenner's Keports, i. 123.) If New Orleans contagionists succeed in getting the city and State govern- ments to establish the contagiousness of yellow fever by a special act, let the same act forbid the exportation of cotton, evfti to our enemies, in time of war. In time of peace, it would be still more unjust to send infected cotton to the subjects of her