Report on the malignant disease, which prevailed in the city of New-York in the autumn of 1805 : addressed to the Governor of the State of New-York / by Edward Miller, M. D., resident physician for the city of New-York.

  • Miller, Edward, 1760-1812.
Date:
[1806]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the malignant disease, which prevailed in the city of New-York in the autumn of 1805 : addressed to the Governor of the State of New-York / by Edward Miller, M. D., resident physician for the city of New-York. 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.)

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    noxiousness of this poison, by avoiding exciting causes, mi/ often be long borne without falling into illness ; and hence the operation of exciting causes in suddenly producing the disease is often so striking as to lead many entirely to over- look the effect of the principal agent. The sources of pernicious exhalation in this city are un- happily very numerous and difficult to correct. Some of them are evils of such magnitude and extent, that it re- quires resolution to consider them, and not to relinquish, in despair, the work of reformation. The mode of con- structing our wharves and slips would almost induce the belief that they had been designed for repositories of filth and nurseries of disease. The made ground on the East river is pregnant with almost annual pestilence ; it is now become enormously extensive ; it was originally composed of the most corrupt materials ; from its relation to the river, and the condition of the wharves and slips, it must constantly remain moist; from its surface being nearly level, it receives and retains the collected filth washed down from the higher grounds; and besides all this, the offensive and putrid matter, which a crowded population must necessarily deposit, and Avhich already underlays a great proportion of this part of the city, incessantly aug- ments the mass of corruption. Can it possibly excite surprize, that the scorching heat of summer, operating on the complicated pollution of this ground, formed of an ag- gregate of nuisances, and still the receptacle of numberless others, should exhale poison and death into the atmosphere which stagnates over its surface? As the materials of putrefaction and the degrees of heat, in a large city, greatly exceed what is found in the adja- cent country; so the diseases arising under such circum- stances must be proportionably more malignant. The pes- tilential fevers of our city differ only in grade from the bilious and remittent fevers of the country. They prevail in the same climates; they come on at the same season of