Some account of the last yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / by Daniel Blair, surgeon general of British Guiana ; edited by John Davy, inspector general of army hospitals, etc.

  • Blair, Daniel.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some account of the last yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / by Daniel Blair, surgeon general of British Guiana ; edited by John Davy, inspector general of army hospitals, etc. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    from yellow fever of the gravior form, and while she herself was yet of a deep yellow colour. The tints of colour in the disease varied. It might be a dirty parchment, light lemon, a gamboge, or a deep orange, or chrome or ochre. The colour rarely affected the internal white tissues. If, as sometimes happened, the vascularity of the eye was slight or absent, there was no difference in appearance from simple jaundice. Sometimes ecchymosis of eye, and yellowness of a circum- scribed character, coexisted and extended pari passu, the yellow- ness keeping one eighth of an inch in advance of the ecchymosis. After absorption of blood in convalescence a deep orange colour was left in the blood spot.* Sometimes a muddy appearance of Avhite of eye, and dusky greasy appearance of eyelids extending to cheeks, was the only discolouration. In scrofulous soi'es the curdy dischai'ge was tinged. The eye was frequently tinged when there was no other discolouration. When yellow suffusion was deep, convalescence was slow. Yellow skin was always a sign of great intensity of disease. Among the 2071 mitior and gi'avior cases 385, had yelloio'sMn, and of these 385, 178 died. Thus the proportion of cases in which the symptom appeared was 18-54 per cent., and the rate of mortality of the symptom was 46'23 per cent. The following Table will show the number of cases in which yellow skin was observed on different days of the disease, the number of deaths and rate of mortality for each day, and the rate per cent, of symptom. T)ay of Disease- 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. H. 15. cer- tained. Total No. of cases 8 IG 46 89 8G [6G 30 18 7 8 rs 3 I 2 No. of deaths - 1 4 18 44 53 27 13 10 1 3 2 1 1 Rate of mortality - 12-.'j0 25-00 39-01 49-4.5 61-G2 40-90 43-33 55-55 14-28 37-50 40-CO Rate per cent, of symptom 0-38 0'7G 2-22 4-20 4-1.5 3-14 1-45 0-87 0-34 0-3R 0'24 0-14 The expulsive efforts of the stomach are of a very different kind in the first and third stages of the yellow fever. There is * [Stains of an ochre colour in the brain and kidneys, in instances in wliicli it may be inferred blood had been extravasated, I have found, on chemical examination, to depend on the presence of peroxide of iron, derived, no doubt, from the blood corpuscles.] ^—Ed.