Australia and yellow fever.

Date:
[1915?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Australia and yellow fever. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/124 (page 14)
    The Local Government Board report deals in a general way with these Republics, as follows (22) :— It is probable that yellow fever is endemic in all these Republics of Central America, but that it smoulders on among the native population in a mild form without attracting much attention, such illness being diagnosed as malaria or something other than yellow fever. CuBA. So far as the city of Habana is concerned, the precautions taken would appear to be very satisfactory. The following is a quotation from the Annual Report of the Surgeon-General, United States Public Health Service, for 1910 (page 133) :— Since 16th September, 1908, no case of yellow fever has been reported in the city of Habana; but, on account of the possibility of a re-appearance of the disease, the Cuban Health authorities have been very watchful, causing all cases of fever in non-immunes to be seen by the Commission for the Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases, which consists of six physicians of large experience in the diagnosis of yellow fever. That the other aspects of yellow fever prevention work are not neglected is evidenced by the information contained in a paper read by Professor Aristides Agramonte at the International Congress of Medicine in Buda Pesth, 1909, in which he details the methods employed to keep Cuba generally free from yellow fever, and these appear to be complete enough to justify the acceptance of Cuba as a country at present free from any risk to Australia or other countries. In this same paper (23) Professor Agramonte speaks very scathingly of the conditions of sanitary administration in both the Southern States ~ of America and the Central American Republics :— I cannot refrain from calling the attention of my hearers to the superiority of our organization when compared with that of our neighbouring countries, including Mexico and the United States. The latter, and more especially the States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, depend almost exclusively upon quarantine measures to prevent the introduction of yellow fever; their towns are overrun by Stegomyia mosquitoes ; the city of New Orleans in Louisiana, which depends for its water supply upon the use of cisterns in every house, has failed to keep them all properly covered, and mosquitoes are to-day nearly as plentiful as before the dreadful epidemic of 1905. The non-immune population is widely disseminated and in the hands of private practitioners, who will fail to recognise the first cases, or will hide them, as they did in the memorable summer of 1905. The same may be said of the other Southern States, whose bugbear is yellow fever, and whose protective mainstay is quarantine, the least useful measure which may ‘be implanted in any country for its defence against said infection. JAMAICA AND TRINIDAD. The former of these countries has experienced a continued series of cases of “ vomiting sickness” which excited the suspicion that they might be cases of yellow fever. These were specially investigated by Dr. H. Seidelin in 1913 (24), and were inquired into by Surgeon White of the United. States Public Health Service in the same year (25), and both concluded that this disease was not yellow fever. Seidelin, however, states definitely that he discovered one case of yellow fever amongst the natives, though the diagnosis in this case was vigorously combated by Dr. Guiteras, of Cuba (26), and Dr. Angus MacDonald. Dr. MacDonald (27) points out that yellow fever is absent in typical form from Kingston, where there must be thousands of susceptibles resident, and where thousands more migrant susceptibles yearly still get bitten by Stegomyra is suggestive of, at any rate, extremely limited endemicity.