Report on the yellow fever of 1867 : made by request to the American Institute of Homoeopathy / by William H. Holcombe.

  • Holcombe, William H. (William Henry), 1825-1893.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the yellow fever of 1867 : made by request to the American Institute of Homoeopathy / by William H. Holcombe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    some ideas, almost wholly practical in their nature, which were suggested by my large experience in the epidemic of 1867. There never yet was an epidemic of yellow fever in which many people, and some physicians, did not say, This is not yel- low fever at all. With forty thousand yellow-fever cases around us last year, many physicians — Creoles, particularly — saw no deaths but those from pernicious fever; and it became quite common to hear the disease spoken of ambiguously as the prevailing epidemic. Why this hesitation and uncer- tainty ? Simply because yellow fever has what may be called the widest and most varied phenomena of symptoms of any dis- ease in the world. Moreover, it is continually changing its type, and, in some measure, even its form. Yet, through all its protean shapes, its fundamental character may be detected, like a musi- cal air, keeping its steady way through the most eccentric varia- tions. Yellow fever formerly ravaged the cities of New York and Philadelphia as severely as it now does New Orleans and Havana. Since 1820, the disease has not appeared in the Northern cities, except to a very limited extent along the wharves to which it had been brought by shipping directly from the tropics. Previous to 1850, the equatorial line was regarded as an impassable barrier to the yellow fever, that disease hav- ing never been observed in the southern hemisphere. Now it is common in all the South American ports north of Buenos Ayres. Within the memory of living physicians, the yellow fever never attacked the native creole population, never extended beyond the suburbs of cities or towns, never attacked the same person a second time, never occurred in the pure negro race, and rarely seized upon children. Now it attacks children, negroes, Creoles, and acclimated persons indiscriminately. A first attack is no certain security against another, and the second attack is sometimes the worse of the two. It visits hundreds of places on the lines of public travel where it was