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.

    13/14 (page 13)
    Wew-York, 1st July, 1824, Messrs. Clayton & Van IYgrejen, Gentlemen—I find you have published in a pamphlet form three Letters of mine, which appeared in the Commercial Advertiser, in the beginning of 1823. At that time I thought they would not excite more attention than the passing glance of a newspaper paragraph; but as you have again brought them to light, I observe, like many of our acts of Congress, they want revising and amending. In my first letter I state, that should the fever again visit the city, I would remove. Not that I saw any thing more alarming in the late, than T saw in all the former fevers; but it is not likely that the same causes which have al¬ ways detained me would again occur. Should I again see a relation, a friend, or neighbour, who would be likely to suffer by my flight, I would think it my duty to remain with them. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and it is our duty to use all lawful means to preserve our own lives and the lives of others; but there are duties to perform, that even the appearance of death in the way should not turn us from the path of duty. Fear, fear, is the greatest part of the curse attendant on yellow fever. I have seen children leave their parents, and parents their children—husbands their wives, and wives their hus¬ bands. I have seen a hoary-headed physician, whose faithful servant and housekeeper had grown gray in his family : she was seized with fever at night, and by seven o’clock next morning, he and all his house had FLED, leaving her in the charge of a strange and hireling nurse, and to the prescriptions of a quack doctor. The poor woman, who had been often flattered for her faithful services in the family, seeing now no face that she knew to approach her, sunk in spirits, and in three days after was hid in Potter’s-field.—So much for the reward of merit. Had the Board of Health and their assistants, the doctors that remained, the nurses of the sick, and buriers of the dead, acted under this heathenlike fear, what would have become of the city ? But it is a stubborn fact in the history of this fever, whether in the West Indies, in Europe, or America, that fewer deaths have occurred among the attendants of the sick, than among the same number of inhabitants, whether in or out of the city. I have only to request, before you put your little book in the hands of the booksellers, that you stitch these remarks in before or behind. I also wish it to be understood, that I neither gain nor lose by the publication, having no interest in the matter. Hoping you may get paid for your paper by the sale, I remain, v Yours,