Remarks on the resolution adopted by the Honourable the Board of Health of the City of New York on the 6th Nov. inst. in relation to Dr. Nicholas Chervin, a French physician. [And his inquiries into the origin of yellow fever / [Nicholas Chervin].

  • Chervin, Nicholas, 1783-1843
Date:
1821]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the resolution adopted by the Honourable the Board of Health of the City of New York on the 6th Nov. inst. in relation to Dr. Nicholas Chervin, a French physician. [And his inquiries into the origin of yellow fever / [Nicholas Chervin]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/16 (page 12)
    show its inconsistency in relation to the subject of my in¬ quiries. Were I so partial as to suppress important and leading facts in the history of the pestilence which I purpose offer¬ ing to the thinking people of all civilized communities, and were the honourable Board really to judge and believe that I have done so, they must consequently infer, either that I am no great friend to truth, and will not be an honourable and candid narrator of all that 1 have inquired after; or that I am deficient in the plain common sense and judgment required in matters of experimental observation. Against the first supposition I humbly request the benefit of a little Christian charitv, or of that benevolence which never im- peaches innocence until guilt is proved; the more so, as my personal eharacer cannot be known to the members of the Board of Health in any unfavourable light.. As for want of judgment in my undertaking, I beg leave to say, that whatever may be my humble mental qualifications, they bore me out during seven years in all the countries and cities I have visited, and assisted me in obtaining the confi¬ dence and written opinions of several hundred eminent phy¬ sicians of all manners and sides of the controverted question. Far from being inclined to suppress any useful and important facts relative to the subject of my inquiries, I have submitted myself to all possible inconveniencies to obtain and collect correct information about them ; it is then not reasonable nor probable that I would attempt to suppress or conceal facts so well known by the medical world as those of Brooklyn, Perth-Amboy, &c. which have been printed in many valua¬ ble publications on the yellow fever. Were those, or any other prominent facts of the same purport, to be omitted, or not taken into consideration in my intended work on the origin and nature of this disease, I must either suppress from my future collection the authentic documents I have obtained from contagionist physicians, who have referred their opinion