On dengue : its history, pathology, and treatment / by S. Henry Dickson, M.D.

  • Dickson, Samuel Henry, 1798-1872.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On dengue : its history, pathology, and treatment / by S. Henry Dickson, M.D. 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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    ON DENGUE. Bv this name is known an eruptive fever, or exanthematous affec- tion, which, in 1827-2S, spread extensively over the West Indian Islands and the neighbouring coast of the American continent. It seems to have appeared first in the island of St. Thomas, the chief town of which it invaded in September, 1827, attacking in rapid succession almost every individual in a population of about 12,000. Towards the end of October, it passed over to the neighbouring island of St. Croix. We hear of it, in November, in St. Bartho- lomew's, and in Antigua in January, 1828. It prevailed at Ha- vanna in the succeeding April, at New Orleans in May and June ; and in July and August affected very generally the inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina, and reached Savannah (Georgia) in September and October. During the same summer, it is said to have shown itself at several points on the Gulf of Mexico, south of the Mississippi, and even along the Atlantic coast of South America ; but we have no authentic details of these occurrences, which were merely noticed in the newspapers of the day. As winter approached, it ceased gradually, either having no new subjects to attack, or sub. siding like other epidemics, and has not, since that period, been met with any where in a definite or regularly recognized form ; in this its brief duration, in the suddenness of its appearance, in the rapi- dity of its spread, and in its total subsequent extinction, offering a striking resemblance to the Black Death* of the fourteenth century, and the Sweating Sickness of the sixteenth, and several other shapes of pestilence which have at different points of time arisen and died away, scattering among the nations horror and affright. Happily, however, as the record will show, it was much unlike these plagues in proportional mortality ; bringing in its train infinitely less of danger and of death than of mere suffering. * Hecker's History of the Black Death was republished in the Select Medical Library for 183G-7.—Up. Lib.