Report on yellow fever / by James Gillkrest.

  • Gillkrest, J. (James), -1853
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on yellow fever / by James Gillkrest. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    14S Alleged Importation from Africa 1 o give even a partial view of tlie arguments employed by various British writers in support of and against the statement of the Yellow Fever having been imported into the West India islands for the first time in 1793, would occupy more space than could with any propriety be devoted to the point. Its importation into the island of Grenada in that year rested chiefly on the authority of the late Dr. Chisholm, who be- lieved that he had traced the origin of the fever to the ship “ Hankey,” w'hich had lately arrived from the island of Bulam, situated on the west coast of Africa. This statement of the im- portation into the West Indies of a “ nova pestisf as it was then called, has since given rise to much controversy; but those who consult Bancroft’s Essay on Yellow Fever, and a small treatise on the disease published in 1818 by Dr. James Veitch, an expe- rienced naval surgeon, will find details of a very interesting nature, which go to prove that on this occasion Dr. Chisholm had certainly proceeded on very erroneous data. Respecting the alleged importation of the disease into Grenada by the “Hankey,” I must refer to the observations of Dr. Cragie, of Edinburgh. This distinguished physician states to the following efiect in his “Practice of Physief’ vol. i. “ Dr. Chisholm maintained that the disease thus generated and imported was a new pestilential disease, unheard of before in the West Indies, entirely different from Yellow Fever and malignant pestilential fever; he specially applied the name of Bulam to it. The whole of this, however, originated in mis-statements of facts, and complete ignorance of the previous history of the West India fever. “ It may therefore be regarded as certain, that the disease which was thus, by a degree of ignorance and misapprehension almost unrivalled in the history of medicine, then and since denominated Bulam fever, was only the usual form of fever common, in certain seasons, to the whole of the West India islands, and which has prevailed there, chiefly among the newly-arrived or not long-resident Europeans, ever since com- mercial intercoui’se has been fully established between Europe and these islands.” And, truly, it was unpardonable for Dr. Chisholm and his followers to apply the term “ JVova pestis” to a disease long before distinctly recorded by a celebrated noso- logist, Sauvage, and other writers, who should have been con- sulted. Without referring to old Spanish and French authors, Drs. Chisholm and Pym might have found, from at least the following writers, that there was nothing 7iew in the matter :— Town, 1736; Lining, 1758; Hillary, 1766; Mackittrick, 1766; Lind, 1772; Hunter, 1788;* Moseley, 1790. * Sir W. Pym states, p. 51, second edition of his work, that the health of Jamaica previous to the arrival of the “ Haiikey ” was good, and (among other authorities, all of whom are referred to in regard to periods subsequent to that about to be
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