Report upon yellow fever in Louisiana in 1878 and subsequently / by S.M. Bemiss.

  • Bemiss, S. M. (Samuel Merrifield), 1821-1884.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report upon yellow fever in Louisiana in 1878 and subsequently / by S.M. Bemiss. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    18/104 (page 16)
    The agency of winds in conveying the yellow fever was not sufficiently marked to justify any assertions in regard to it. It made its appearance in quite a number of pretty widely scattered famiUes in Algiers immediately after a severe norther, which had lasted nearly or quite twelve hours. Some observers thought that the poison'was borne by the strong current of air, from one shore of the river to the opposite. The monitor Canonicus was anchored in the river very much closer to the Algiers shore than to New Orleans, and as the fever had broken out on board some days before the wind storm, some concluded that the poison was blown from her to Algiers. The first case of fever on the Canonicus occurred Aug. 20th. The following is Dr. Armstrong's testimony regard- ing its appearance in Gretna : Dr. J. D. Armstrong, sworn : I have been a practising physician in New Orleans and vicinity since 1869. The first case of yellow fever in Gretna made its appearance early in September, some time after it had been declared epidemic in New Orleans. The first case originated about one square from the river. The communication between New Orleans and Gretna was uninterrupted during the season, and there was no quarantine. I was not in Gretna in 1870 and 1871, and do not know whether there was any fever there then or not. I visited McDonoughville, and there saw some twenty cases. The wind for several weeks past had been blowing from the south-west. There were some cases in Algiers, almost immediately opposite the place where the Canonicus was lying, in the Gardere family. While I wish, in this immediate connection, to refer the reader to Sergeant Simon's diagrams, I am obliged to say that I saw nothing extraordinary in the appearance of the clouds or other atmospheric conditions prior to or during the epidemic. I know of no observation which supports the belief in yellow fever clouds, and feel disposed to place them alongside of Mr. Glaisher's cholera clouds, which is simply saying they may theoi^etically exist, but are yet impossible of practical detection and defini- tion.