President's address before South Carolina Medical Association, meeting held in Columbia, April, 1872 : Yellow Fever in Charleston, 1871, with remarks upon its treatment / by Francis Peyre Porcher.

  • Porcher, Francis Peyre, 1824-1895.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: President's address before South Carolina Medical Association, meeting held in Columbia, April, 1872 : Yellow Fever in Charleston, 1871, with remarks upon its treatment / by Francis Peyre Porcher. 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.

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    amidst the harrassments which occasionally beset the practi- tioner during the prevalence of an epidemic pestilence,— which if not very severe in comparison with others,—yet created such a panic among the people, and so much alarm among their medical advisers as to drive almost immedi- ately from the city nearly every one who could leave it. Some of the physicians, and the proprietors of the daily journals also, for a long time stoutly denied the existence of the fever. When they were asked the question, and with the papers, were answering no ; others of the physicians and the telegrams said decidedly yes! What then were the kin- dreds of the people ” to do who depended on them for in- formation? How were they to act amid such discrepant opinions ? Like the blockish Grecian they cried ; “ give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.” But no one came forward to offer them the light they required. In this strange con- flict, which it behooves me to relate, the authorities and the Board of Health—the very constituted ministers and guar- dians of the temple of Hygeia, who were specially appointed and were supposed to preside at her altars—whilst profes- sing to report the presence or the absence of contagious disease, omitted to announce any,—or ignored its presence if it existed. When all at once, like a flash of lightning in a clear sky, a statement was exploded by the Medical Society—sitting in full conclave—which declared the presence of 37 cases of yellow (?) fever in our very midst! Meantime, Rumor, set at liberty by our own palpable con- tradictions, or our failure to declare the real condition, on swift wings and with her thousand tongues, flew through the land, ever gaining strength as she sped, {viresque acquirit eundo)—and gendering on her path a full and baleful brood of doubts, uncertainties and exaggerations—till truth and error were mingled in undistinguishable confusion. But one thing was certain: a decree had already gone forth, like that kept alive in the breast of the citizens of Rome against her African rival Carthago delenda est! The city must be shunned, and by consequence ruined. Unfortunately the doom was a just one. Will it be believed that a grim and expensive farce like this, spiced by no humor of comedy to enliven it, but as fraught with horror and as deadly and as remorseless as ever a tragedy of .^schylus, is permitted to be repeated at each time that any vague and unauthorized report of the existence of the