Second report on quarantine : yellow fever, with appendices, presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty / [by the] General Board of Health.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report on quarantine : yellow fever, with appendices, presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty / [by the] General Board of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    20/432 (page 12)
    character graced and adorned the military profession, when he contemplated that harbinger of death, the black vomit, pouring from his stomach, on the evening preceding his death, rose from his couch in full possession of all his acumen, to execute some legal deeds of importance, declaring at the same time, in reply to my dissuasions, he could with equal facility have drawn out a plan for military operations. Lieutenant Wright, one of my earliest patients at Port-au-Prince, St. Domingo, on the fourth day of the fever rose from his bed in perfect possession of his senses, dressed himself correctly, and went into the market- place accompanied by myself, where he spent some time pur- chasing fruits and other things, returned to his barrack-room, where he shortly expired in a torrent of black vomit. Lieutenant Mackay, of the Quarter-Master-Gencral's department, Cape St. Nicholas Mole, on the day of his death, was up and dressed on the sofa, with books and papers before him at ten in the morning, passing jokes of comparison between his own dingy complexion, made so by the disease, and that of his mulatto nurse ; at two he expired in the same way as Lieutenant Wright. A sailor on board the flag-ship of Admiral Harvey, with whom I was taking a cruise for my health in the year 1816, was attacked with Yellow Fever, but he would not ac- knowledge he was ill. He was all the time up and dressed one of the earliest in the morning, saying that there was nothing the matter with him, and that he would go back to his duty the next day. He owned he was sick at stomach, and that the vomitings were dark-coloured, but that was from the red wine negus they had given him to drink, or the coflfee which the cook had spoiled, and therefore made him sick ; and in this persuasion instead of going to his duty, he died on the following day. Similar cases are given by Dr. Rush in his inquiries into the Yellow Fever at Philadelphia. The patient/' says Dr. Blair, dies with intelligence un- clouded, and his muscular strength but little impaired, telling you he is getting quite well, or as a poor dying Irish sailor ex- pressed himself, ' iligant this mornin.' Often, says Dr. Davy, extreme danger exists when the patient considers, himself all but well, and when the pulse is little dif- ferent from that in health. Yellow Fever further resembles Cholera in the slight- ness of the apparently determining cause which often ushers in a fatal attack. Sometimes, says Dr. Blair, the determining cause seemed of the slightest description : the shock on the stomach by an ice-cream or glass of iced punch, or the indigestion of an unripe orange, would occasionally set the train of symptoms in motion.