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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    Britannic Majesty, or to the subjects of the Emperor of the French. It wouldfbe still more criminal to export cotton and contagion to Philadelphia, New York, Bos- ton and other cities, as a return for their opulent donations to yellow fever sufferers during the late epidemic. It may be said that a contagionist, how sincere so ever he may be, is not bound to care for his neighbor's interests and health; but honesty requires him to care for both. It is doubtful whether the English Minister was strictly moral when he declared that he cared for England and English interests aloneP The same du- beity hangs over Commodore Bainbrldge's toast— My country if right, but my country right or wrongP If yellow fever be contagious and transportable, quarantine ought to be enforced by grape and canister, gibbets, prisons and fines, though commerce should perish altogether. The late Dr. Townsend, who was a consistent, honest and able quaran- tinist, says, in his book on the yellow fever of New York, as it appeared in 1822) that all intercourse with the West Indies [and why not with New Orleans?] should be prohibited for five months in every year, beginning with June, in order to prevent the importation of yellow fever. [229.] He says, that '' unless an unbroken line of lazarettoes be established along the whole coast, to guard against the pestilence' we can never hope to be entirely secure. What will avail the most efficient system of quarantine laws, established here and there in a few cities on the coast, if all the intermediate towns, with which a constant intercourse is going on, freely admit vessels, etc. [231.] If quarantine is to reign in New Orleans, let it be as rigid as in the Levant. For no Eastern mummery can be more absurd than that practiced at the quarantine stations of the United States at the present time. The strictness of the East has both consistency and reason in its favor, (admitting the doctrine of contagion,) which cannot be urged in favor of the West. A doctor of some Atlantic city of the Union goes on board of a ship from New Orleans—the plague stricken city—he looks at the cotton bales, and the passengers, and he straight way ignores his own theory> his oath and the law; for in a few minutes or hours after, the vessel is admitted} no one being able to know how he could possibly have ascertained by a look, whether contagion was or was not in the vessel. If yellow fever quarantine be well founded, such conduct is murder by the thousand. If the laws of the land and of nature have established the fact of the importa- bility of yellow fever by means of persons and merchandise, and if quarantine be necessary to prevent this importation, then quarantine never can be dispensed with by a look or a whim; that is, the laws of nature cannot be changed in this way. The future. While iEsculapians have no special gift of foretelling which will, and which will not be an epidemic year, history furnishes presumptions, analogies, and deduc- tions, more or less favorable to the future in New Orleans, even though the next few years should be as insalubrious us the past. Epidemics have not only a limited period of increment and decrement in any one year, but they usually have more prolonged periods of increment and decrement, through series of years, often constituting what may be called a cycle of variable duration, after which they generally cease. So it was with the plague in Europe; so it was with the yellow fever in the Spanish peninsula; so it was with the cities of th^ United States in the north, as Boston) New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other places. Its invasion of the Southern