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

Date:
1852
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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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    trated and fatal forms to a common and similar train of ultimate phenomena. We can scarcely, I think, doubt that efficient and similar elements for the production of fever are to he found in all inter- tropical countries, and yet, with slight occasional deviations, how constantly it takes on the form common to the latitude in which it occurs; and nothing confirms me so much in the opinion of Yellow Fever being a grade, as its absence from the eastern hemisphere, and its close resemblance in the organs affected to all the severe fevers, especially those of malaria, in all places of a certain temperature north of the tropic of cancer. In the absence of the European constitution, the Bulam form of Yellow Fever would probably be as unfrequent in the West Indies, as in Europe, and that in a much less concentrated form. But the occasional absence of the highest and most fatal grade of a disease, will not disprove the presence of more mitigated forms of that disease, and of the causes on which it depends ; and I conceive we may, with equal justice, maintain, that common continued fever and its causes are absent from this country, because we have not at all times those wide spread, destructive, and peculiar forms of the disease, which occasionally show them- selves, as that Yellow Fever does not admit of any lower grade than that marked by black vomit. Fever differs in grade and in form, and often in type, in different islands of the West Indies, and in different localities of the same island, and the features of one are so often blended with those of another, as almost to defy classification, proving the truth of Dr. Percival’s remark, “ that those who are most familiar with the aspect of fever, on the large scale, will be least disposed to subdivide it into genera.” In 1834 in Malta, the regiments in garrison had more than the usual number of fevers, all of a remittent character, and in two of them from 20 to 30 cases occurred, presenting great irrita- bility of stomach, yellowness of surface, haemorrhages, sup- pression of urine, and death in several cases. In the other three corps, there was not a case of this kind, nor a single death. Now will it be contended that these cases were a totally dif- ferent disease from that affecting the majority, not only ot the garrison, but the majority of the two regiments in which these peculiar cases occurred. In the late epidemic in Barbados, the 72nd Regiment* was supposed to be free from black vomit fever for seven months; while two other corps were suffering from that form of disease in the same garrison, because, during that period, they had only a few cases, monthly, of a mild fever without a death. Now I ask where is the proof that these mild cases were not identical with the fever, which, from a more * See Dr. Gillkrest’s Report, Addenda K., p. 226. [G. R. H.]