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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    States ; provided the malignant air of the city had been avoid- ed. The force of this fact seems never to have been duly considered or appreciated. The numerous retinue of medical attendants, nurses, washerwomen, servants, &c. which be- long to a hospital, must be known to ever}' body. How greatly they are all exposed to contagion, if it could be sup- posed to exist in this case, is equally known. The most malignant degrees of the disease are constantly found in these institutions. The exposure of physicians and their assist- ants is well understood. The duty of the nurses leads to an incessant and unreserved intercourse with the sick. They pass the greater part of their time, and sleep in the apart- ments of the sick, the dying and the dead.* In lifting, un- dressing, dressing, administering remedies, and many other modes of assistance, they are very often in actual contact, and commonly within a small distance of the patients. They receive and carry away all excrementitious discharges. Se- veral persons are employed in washing the foul clothes and bedding of the sick and the dead. Not only all these have invariably escaped the disease, but likewise all the persons occupied in the removal of the sick from the city to the hos- pital, who in this service went without reserve into the most pestilential quarters of the town, entered the most filthy a- partments, and lifted the sick into their carriages dressed in their foulest clothes, and sinking under the worst degrees of the disease.j * The nurses at Bellevue Hospital became so entirely free from all apprehensions of the contagiousness of this dis- ease, that they often slept on the same bed with the sick; and it happened more than once, in the course of the seasony that a nurse, overcome with fatigue and want of sleep, threw herself in the night, for a little repose, on the bed of a dying patient, and remained there asleep till the patient was dead, and it became necessary to remove the corpse. t In order to account for the escape of these persons, which is indeed wonderful, it is proper to state that they all resided during the season at the Alm$-2Iousc> an elevated