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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    portion of single cases in the midst of families is always great; and the instances of any large proportion of families being attacked were comparatively very rare in our late epi- demic. It appears from the records of this epidemic, that there were thirty-one streets of the city, most of which con- tinued to be crowded with inhabitants, in which only a single case in each occurred; and in the mass of six hundred cases reported to the Board of Health, there were only thirty-five houses in which more than a single case was found. If the number of deaths should be supposed to afford better ground of calculation, it will be found that there were forty streets, and those generally crowded throughout the season, in which only one death in each took place ; not more than three died in one house, of which there were only two instances; and, during the whole epidemic, there were only twelve instan- ces of two persons dj'ing in one house.* The great mass of persons attacked with the disease, consisted of such as never had approached the sick, or any other assignable source of contagion ; and, on the contrary, as will presently appear, great numbers were exposed to close intercourse with the sick, without injury. instances is altogether as much so. Many of the most judi- cious of our citizens were convinced of the origination of the disease from domestic filth in the year 1798, by the follow- ing occurrence. Between twenty and thirty persons, at the commencement of that destructive epidemic, in a small neighbourhood at the lower end of John-street, were sudden- ly seized with the disease in one night, in consequence of a blast of putrid exhalations from the sewer of Burling-slip. The persons attacked were only such as lived directly to the leeward of this blast from the sewer; while others, close in the vicinity, but not exposed to this current, entirely escaped. * From these reports to the Board of Health, it result.* that upwards of five hundred, out of six hundred cases of malignant fever which occurred, were single in the respec- tive families; and that more than three-fourths of the deaths which took place in the city, were likewise single in the respective families in which they occurred.