Second report on quarantine. Yellow fever. With appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1852
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report on quarantine. Yellow fever. With appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    Report of the French Commission M'William ; the unaccountable absence of remittent fever, with which a truly contagious and foreign disease was not likely to have interfered, the season of the year, and the increase of sick- ness and mortality of the people of the Eclair, in the fort, which was, in every respect, well calculated to generate Yellow Fever, and sicken the guards, without the aid of contagion,—all concur to show, in my opinion, an epidemic constitution of atmos- phere, and not contagion. Lind notices the liability of the Cape de Verd Islands to destructive outbreaks of fever; and as some corroboration of this, I may mention that as medical officer in charge of troops and settlers for the Cape on board a transport, in 1819, which put into the island of St. Jago for six or eight days, I was, as also the master and others, most earnestly en- treated and urged by several inhabitants, to hurry our departure, on account of the approaching season of fever. I may here notice the objection raised by the contagionists against the supposed influence of an epidemic cause in Yellow Fever, viz., that it would not be confined to the town of Gibraltar, but extend to the neutral ground, where the population has always found protection. The occurrences in the last visitation of cholera in London, may be quoted in reply, and particularly the case of the pauper children in Drouet's establishment, at Tooting, who were moved to London with the happiest effect, thus showing they had simply removed from the conditions favourable to the development of the disease. As long as men can view things differently, there is ample scope for difference of opinion on the subject of Yellow Fever. I believe in the present state of our knowledge, the question does not admit of being settled; and the opposite conclusions arrived at by the several inquiries, composed as they have been of equally competent men, while showing the futility of such investigations, points out the propriety of our being satisfied, at least for the present, with the instalment which, I conceive, has been made towards its adjustment. That instalment, as far as I can discover, by a careful analysis and digest of the whole sub- ject, supported as it is by the majority of medical officers in the army, and I believe in the navy, who have the best opportunities of forming correct conclusions, is the great probability of the non-contagious nature of the disease. In the Report of the Commission appointed in 1827, by the Royal Academy of Medicine of Paris, to examine into the docu- ments furnished by M. Chervin, relating to Yellow Fever, it appears that out of 531 physicians of different countries, 48 only admitted the contagion of Yellow Fever, but ild degres tres varies et avec des restrictions plus ou moins marquees and of these, nine were more or less qualified contagionists, some believing it was not essentially contagious, but might become so under certain circumstances; others that it was contagious in Europe, and the