The epidemic yellow fevers of Natchez : an essay.

  • Monette, John W. (John Wesley), 1803-1851.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The epidemic yellow fevers of Natchez : an essay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    17/84
    allied to them. And this continues to be the case, notwith- standing these foetid effluvia have been tested, and found to contain no principle particularly deleterious to health: each one, in reference to the cause of an epidemic, looks alone to those matters which are most offensive to their olfactories; notwithstanding experience teaches that the infected atmos- phere cannot be distinguished from common air, by any of our senses. In searching out the source of this disease, in- stead of being directed by reason and experience, it is too fre- cmently the case, that they are led by the nose alone; and where nothing else can be found sufficient, all the pestilence is traced to a filthy back yard, a wet sewer, a dead rat, or a rotten potatoe. As we before observed, the immediate cause of yellow fever as an epidemic, is a subtle gaseous poison in the atmos- phere : but how it is generated, or from what it is thrown off, we are not certainly informed. The medical faculty have been constantly engaged in efforts to detect its origin and ex- plain its nature; they have manifested zeal and industry worthy the cause of science, to search out and expound the hidden, ii not mysterious cause. In unnumbered instances, they have supposed they had traced the monster to his den : but when they have attempted to place the shackles upon him, he has vanished. The difficulty of arriving at the true knowledge of such a mysterious agent, has only stimulated the zeal, and excited the industry of the medical faculty, whose province is to search out the physical causes of morbid phenomena. Hence the great diversity of opinions entertained and ad- vanced on the origin of this pestilential miasm. At onetime, it has been traced successfully, as was believed, to putrefying and putrid vegetable matter, sometimes of one kind, and some- times of another. At another time, it has been as clearly traced to putrescent animal matters of one kind or another: at another time, it has been as clearly traced to the union.of animal and vegetable matter in a state of putrefaction; at an- b*