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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    been elicited from the last epidemic to show that our Inquiries must be directed to the sliore. If it be argued that the accu- mulation on the foreshores have acted only mechanically by ob- structing the internal drainage of the country, and therefore the pathogenic causes are to be sought for within the empoldered lands generally, it may be asked why yellow fever is not engen- dered at post Mahaica, or on the Corentyne coast,—the worst drained, the swampiest, and yet in all seasons the healthiest portions of the colony. Some new element is required in the generation of yellow fever beside what is to be found usually within our embank- ments, and it is in all probability dependent on a sea change. To carry on an investigation on the influences which induce our yellow fever epidemic, would be more than any one individual would be suited for. Although the pathogenic cause may be close at hand and easily reached, the assiduous and joint re- searches, on a well considered plan, of the geologist, chemist, botanist, entomologist, and physician, would be the necessary earnest of success in any such undertaking. A minute inquiry into the vegetable, animal, and mineral constituents of our foreshores, should be made now, while the disease is absent, and carefully recorded for comparison with a similar one, to be commenced and continued during the next epidemic. In the difference there may be found some entity, or condition, common to all localities where yellow fever exists. Govern- ment, of course, alone could provide for a scientific commission of the kind required, and it would be no doubt expensive. But in anything feasible for discovering the origin of yellow fever, an atmosphere; — in brief, a most subtile and violent poison, acting, probably, through the medium of the blood, and, when not itself destroyed by the living powers, destructive of life- It is easy to find analogies in favour of this conjecture in the operation of most of the poisons, whether animal or vegetable, including some that are mineral, arsenic for instance, which has already been alluded to. Were poisoning conducted on a large scale, and no inquiry instituted to detect the crime and the kind of poison used, and one were used for a time, and no other, the consequence would be an epidemic as mysterious, as to its origin, as yellow fever is now, or cholera, and as well marked in its symptoms. What research has accomplished in the instances of ordinary poisoning, we must hope it will effect when carried further, and with a minuteness and delicacy increasing with the difficulty of the inquiry, in the instances of yellow fever and other epidemic diseases.] —Ed.