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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    tagious nature, and capable everywhere of showing, under favourable circumstances, that character, a conclusion which I maintain rests on nothing that can be called evidence. Time after time have black vomit cases been landed nt Port Royal, Barbados, and other ports, without spreading the disease, and that too under the most favourable circumstances for its propagation were it contagious; and however this may be attempted to be explained by those who believe in qualified contagion, they will have difficulty in reconciling that a single suspected stranger in Gibraltar in 1804; a suspicion in 1810, and 1813; and the ship “ Dygden,” with which there had been no communication* in 1828; should on these occasions have proved more potent than a ship-load at other times. “ In 1790,” says Tomassini, “the frigate ‘General Green,’ arrived at New York; she had become leaky from the effects of a violent storm, and having afterwards been subjected to excessive heat, the Yellow Fever broke out. The numbers of sick and of deaths were very great. As soon as she arrived, they sent 100 patients on shore ; no attention was paid either to the disease, the sick, or their effects. Notwithstanding, they did not communicate it to a single person, either in the hospital, or in the town !” According to Arejnla, a fleet from the West Indies, in 1805, landed 200 sick at Cadiz, many of them with yellowness of skin, and black vomit, and the disease was not communicated to the population; and yet the destructive epidemic of 1800 in the same place was supposed to have been imported by a ship to which no other suspicion could attach than her having been at the Havannah. Dr. Wilson states that H. M.’s ship “ Euryalus,” in 1819, anchored in Carlisle Bay, Barbados, from Bermuda, with fever on board; she was refused pratique, and went to sea. “ The sickness increased, she put into the Danish Island of St. Thomas, •where the governor, actuated by the ordinary feelings of huma- nity, gave orders for the immediate reception of the sick in hospital. Seven men were landed at first, and numbers after- wards, and it was never believed, or alleged, that they commu- nicated the disease.” The principal medical officer in this year was a contagionist, the only one, I believe, of an ultra kind, to be found in this class for several years, and who had instituted quarantine regulations to the great annoyance of the inhabitants. “ In 1820 and 1821,” says Assistant-Surgeon Dr. Bone, “ Yellow Fever prevailed in St. Ann’s Garrison, Barbadoes, quarantine regulations were enforced in 1820, but not in 1821, and the disease stopped in both years at the same season, the beginning of February of the following year.” The same writer states “that in Tobago, in 1820, in 17 months, 99 from 144 * Qy. no infraction of quarantine regulations. [G. B. H.]