Volume 1

Yellow fever considered in its historical, pathological, etiological, and therapeutical relations : including a sketch of the disease as it has occurred in Philadelphia from 1699 to 1854 ; with an examination of the connections between it and the fevers known under the same name in other parts of temperate, as well as in tropical regions / by R. La Roche.

  • La Roche, R. (René), 1795-1872.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Yellow fever considered in its historical, pathological, etiological, and therapeutical relations : including a sketch of the disease as it has occurred in Philadelphia from 1699 to 1854 ; with an examination of the connections between it and the fevers known under the same name in other parts of temperate, as well as in tropical regions / by R. La Roche. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    647/708 (page 591)
    proceeding further, that while doubting or denying the identity of yellow fever with the bilious remittent of this and other countries, I wish to include under the former name the several varieties and grades of the disease which is almost universally recognized as such in temperate and tropical regions, and thereby avoid the error committed by Dr. Copland, who draws a line of demarcation between true yellow fever, or, as he denominates the disease, the hjeraagastric pestilence, and a form of fever of tropical climates which he describes under another name—the malignant remittent—but which, on strict analysis, is found to differ in nothing from the former. Dr. Copland, let it be stated, accuses Dr. Bancroft of misleading the inex- perienced, and long mystifying many (iii. 146). This may be granted. But, at the same time, it may be doubted whether Dr. C. has not been guilty of the same offence, though in another way; for, while Bancroft has made of tioo diseases 07ie, the other has made of one disease several—not without admitting, however, that what he calls the malignant remittent, assumes sometimes the type and the symptoms of the true yellow fever (iii. 140), but that, nevertheless, it differs materially from it in the fact that it has not yet acquired the contagious property 1 But, let this be as it may, it is to be borne in mind, that several of the circumstances enumerated in proof of the exact similarity, in point of nature, between the yellow and ordinary autumnal fevers—the appearance of all at the same period of the year—their prevailing in the same localities, and among the same classes of individuals—their being under the influence of the same meteorological conditions—favoured in their origin by heat and humidity, and arrested by cold, &c., their prevailing most in low, ill-venti- lated places and close apartments—their being more apt to attack at night— their effects being mitigated by a removal to a more healthy situation—their efficient causes being wafted by the wind—all these circumstances, I say, prove, doubtless, that these diseases are all the products of morbid agencies or poisons of kindred nature; but from this it does not necessarily follow, that they are identically the same, and differ only in respect to the degree of their violence; to the extent to which the intoxication has been carried, and to the greater concentration of the poison. Nothing can prevent the belief, that malarial exhalations may differ so materially in their composition as to give rise to disease which, while approximating in this, that they are ma- larial and members of the same family, differ materially in every other respect. The question then to be decided would be, whether or not such a difference exists in the nature of the poisonous agents producing the fevers in question. Until the question is satisfactorily settled in the negative, it will be unsafe to affirm that the complaints they occasion, however dissimilar in many points, are identically the same. I shall, in a future chapter, adduce some facts calculated to prove the reality of this difference, and therefore will recur to the subject here, only so far as is necessary for the elucidation of the question more particularly under consideration. Whatever be the nature of the morbific agencies giving rise to those dis- eases, and however allied they may be to each other, there are facts sufficient