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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    XVI. Conclusions of the General Board of Health relative to Yellow Fever* From a consideration of the whole of the preceding evidence respecting yellow fever, we have arrived at the following con- clusions:— 1. That yellow fever epidemics break out simultaneously in dif- ferent and distant towns, and in different and distant parts of the same town, often under circumstances in which communication with infected persons is impossible. 2. That yellow fevpr epidemics are usually preceded by the occur- rence of individual or sporadic cases of the disease, which sporadic cases are likewise common in seasons when no epidemic prevails. 3. That yellow fever epidemics, though occasionally extending over large tracts of country, are more frequently limited as to the space over which they spread, often not involving the whole of a town, and sometimes not even any considerable district of it. 4. That yellow fever epidemics do not spread from district to dis- trict by any rule of gradual progression, but often ravage certain localities, while they spare entirely, or visit very lightly, others in the immediate neighbourhood, with which the inhabitants are in constant intercommunication. 5. That yellow fever epidemics, when they invade a district, do not spread from the houses infected to the next, and thence to the adjoining, and thus extend as from a centre, but, on the contrary* are often strictly confined to particular houses in a street, to particular houses on one side of a street, to particular rooms in the same house, and often even to particular rooms on the same story. 6. That in general when yellow fever breaks out in a family, only one or two individuals are attacked; commonly the attendants on the sick escape; and when several members of a family are successively attacked, or the attendants on the sick suffer, either the epidemic was general in the locality, or the individual attacked had gone into an infected district. 7. That when yellow fever is prevalent in a locality, the most rigid seclusion in that locality affords no protection from the disease. * [From the able and elaborate OfiBcial Report, after very extensive and search- ing inquiry, of the General Board of Health, composed of the Earl of Shaftesbury Mr. Edwin Chadwick, and Dr. T. Southwood Smith. The Report, with its Appendices extending to 414 pages, is dated the 7th April, 1852. Ed.]