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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    ■commonly called *■ the grave-yard of the West.’ It is now esteemed one of the most healthy. Intermittent fever was a regular annual visitant; and occasionally a form of bilious fever prevailed, rival- ling yellow in malignity, and threatening to depopulate the town. ITfie most fatal of these endemics broke out in the summer of 1822, iiafter a hot rainy season. The number of victims from it, out of aa population less than 5000, was 232. In a family consisting of .20 persons, 19 were sick at one time, and in some families every sindividual died. At this time only one street in Louisville was {paved, and within its limits were at least eight ponds of greater tor less dimensions, most of which, in the course of the autumn, • |i'were dried up, exposing foul bottoms to the sun.” i 1] We cite the following as an example of the extraordi- , inary mortality which may be produced by the concentration of some of the more powerful of these localizing causes i iin unusual intensity. In the Bahamas, says Dr. A. Browne, quoting from iitthe Statistical Report—• “ We find that the mortality among the white inhabitants of all ages was about three times as high as in Britain, while the |! i mortality among the white troops there was 13 times as great I , as at home. “ The principal barrack was, till lately, at Fort Charlotte, a - spot notorious for its insalubrity. It is situated on the summit of the little ridge of ground in rear of the town of Nassau, and surrounded in every direction, except towards the sea, by exten- sive marshes, the exhalations from which, during the morn- ing and evening, generally envelope the barrack in a dense fog. “ Shortly after it was erected, in the end of the last century, nearly the whole of the 47th Regiment, including men, women, and children, were swept off by Yellow Fever within a few weeks. In 1802 the 7th Fusiliers buried 220 out of 300 within as short a period, and such was the virulence of the disease, that out of 12 officers attacked, one only recovered. In the following year it again broke out, and reduced the remainder of this force to 50 men, whose lives were for a time saved by removal to a neighbouring island, where only one died in the course of three months; but immediately on their return, the commanding officer and almost every man of this ill-fated body fell victims to the insalubrity of the fort. For some years after- wards no European troops seem to have inhabited it; but 70 men of the 58th Regiment were sent there in 1818, who lost about 40 in six months, besides 13 out of 37 women and chil- dren; not a man of the whole force was left fit for duty ; and the lives of the survivors were only saved by removal to a small