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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    same constitution ; they commit their ravages on the same organs of the body, and produce symptoms differing only in degree ; and they decline and disappear at the same sea- son and under the same circumstances. In the city we often sae in the same family and under equal circumstan- ces of exposure, the malignant forms of pestilence and the mild forms of remittent fever; and in the country, while the great mass of cases are usually mild, we occasionally meet with some which exhibit the violent attack, the in- tense malignity and the rapid dissolution, which more fre- quently mark the pestilential fevers of the city. Besides the points of analogy just mentioned, there is ano- ther equally or perhaps more remarkable. The remittent fever of the country, and the malignant fevers (denominated yellow) of our cities, have a similar irregularity which ge- nerally characterizes them, and leads strongly to the infer- ence of the similarity of their origin. In the districts of the country where remittent fevers prevail, and in the cities which produce malignant fevers, we find these diseases, in seasons apparently similar, and even in the same season, often exhibiting a singular local unsteadiness in their appearance, extent and violence. In the operation of the causes which produce them, there is something remarkably contingent and desultory. Remittent fevers will prevail sometimes in one district of a low country and sometimes in another ; while the whole extent of these different districts seems to be equally liable to the disease, and no adequate cause can be assigned for the visitation of the one, and the escape of the other. In like manner, some of our cities are invaded by pestilence, in unfavorable seasons; while ethers, appai just as liable to be invaded, escape. For these reasons, as well as many others which my limits will not allow me to state, I conclude that our late epidemic, and all the preceding similar ones, have been of do: