Letters on the yellow fever of 1822 / [Grant Thorburn].

  • Grant Thorburn
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on the yellow fever of 1822 / [Grant Thorburn]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/14 (page 11)
    ground of New-Haven, (where the weary seem emphatically to be at rest,) they would no longer wish to lay their departed friends in vaults, running under the pavements of the streets, where their bones are kept in perpetual motion by the rolling of carriages and carts. I think when our worthy friend B. R. came down Broadwat', exploring the dry gutters and clean pavements in search of the origin of the fever, had he just put on his spectacles, he might have seen at the foot of Rector-street, the spot where it began; he might have seen it spread along Washington, before it reached Greenwich street; he might have seen it in Lumber, then creeping up Rector street; and being a master of figures, he might have counted near forty days from its commencement before it spread its poisonous breath among the clean, healthy and airy mansions of Broadway. Had he taken the above precaution, I don't think he would have laid the blame on the poor water-carts, sprinkling the light dust of the street with clear salt water. Had I not found the name of so re¬ spectable a citizen to the work above quoted, I would have thought it was a conspiracy among the patent coat cleaners and sellers of cough drops, to encourage trade. Fifty years ago, the small pox created as great an alarm, and proved as fatal as the yellow fever does now. The very mention of yellow fever inspires the minds of most people with such a terror, that they are unable to think or speak aright on the subject. The ghost of Bonaparte, landing on the Battery at the head of a thousand Cossacks, could not have pro¬ duced a more precipitate retreat than was witnessed in New-York last August. If our great men and little men, wise men and learn¬ ed men, would agree for a while to suspend their fast held opinions —let it once be said the same cause will produce the same effect every where 5 that the same degree of heat, filth and moisture, will produce the same poison in New-York as it does in Havanna; that the foul air in the hold of a vessel, coming from a higher latitude, will gather more strength and virulence from having been pent up for weeks or months, and if allowed to explode at our wharves will catch our already inflammable air, as certainly as the spark from the flint applied to the powder—surely, every friend to a besieged city will agree to put down the enemy within, as well as prevent his ap¬ proach from without. Let those whose business it is, act like ra-