Second report on quarantine : yellow fever, with appendices / General Board of Health.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report on quarantine : yellow fever, with appendices / General Board of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Peculiar susceptibility of Persons newly arrived. ; ttible subjects are those who have recently arrived within iits sphere, particularly the inhabitants of northern cli- mates, and that the predisposition to an attack, increases ■with the degree of the northern latitude from which the •stranger has arrived, and the shortness of the interval that lhas passed since he left the European for the Equatorial ] region. In illustration of the comparative security of native iinhabitants over new comers. Dr. Fergusson adverts to tthe experience of the troops at Cape St. Nicholas Mole, 'St. Domingo, among whom soon after disembarking, 'Yellow Fever broke out “at every station and in every ; place.” At the commencement of the epidemic a census >was taken of the inhabitants of the town exclusive of the inegro slaves; they were found to be very nearly equal in inumbers with the newly arrived white soldiers. At the j (conclusion of the epidemic when 1,500 soldiers, the ori- ginal complement of the men, had perished, the inha- bitants had lost not more than one in thirty of all ages. Dr. Burrell states that:— “ Of thirty regiments that arrived in the Windward and Leeward Islands between 1816 and 1848, ten were attacked i with black vomit fever a very short time after landing; two within three months ; eleven within twelve months ; five within ' 1 two years ; and two within three years of their arrival. Of thirteen regiments which landed in Jamaica between the years 1816 and 1834, four were attacked within six months; seven ■ within twelve months; and two within eighteen months. From 1838 to 1848, seven regiments arrived in that island, but the : f emancipation of the negroes permitting the troops to be quar- tered in the mountains, a few cases only of black vomit fever appeared, within that period, in two of them soon after landing.” The practical conclusion drawn by the most eminent medical authorities conversant with this disease, from these its peculiar characteristics is, that it is as impossible for Quarantine to afford protection against Yellow Fever, as it is for it to afford protection against Cholera. The fact and the inference are thus stated by Dr. Fergusson. “ A body of English troops arrives in a West India colony, and soon after the Yellow Fever breaks out amongst them. The seasoned Creolised white inhabitants feel little or nothing