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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    In order to account for these facts, the advocates of con- tagion contend that its activity is confined to impure air, and that by this alone it can be conducted to the objects of its at- tack. Our hospital at Bellevue, however, is not so construct- ed as to allow the supposition of great purity of the air ; and indeed the state of the land-air in the months of August, September and October, cannot be considered as pure, in any part of our country. But admitting the highest possi- ble purity of air in these hospitals, the operation of contagion, if it existed there, could not by such means be avoided. When the naked hands of physicians and nurses are in con- tact with the skin of the patient, scorched with febrile heat, or bedewed with the matter of perspiration, how can pure air be interposed to arrest the passage of contagion ? When they inhale, as they often do, the breath and effluvia of the sick, no man can doubt that such air is sufficiently impure to be the conductor of contagion, if it really existed. In all contagious diseases, contact and immediate inhalation of the effluvia and breath of the sick, are supposed to constitute the greatest possible exposure ; and in such cases, it is plain, the interposition of air, pure or impure, must be equally un- availing to arrest the evil. Yet in these hospitals, persons not only escape this danger, but none was ever known to be infected by it.J 5. The extinction of the disease by cold weather, is an insuperable objection to the doctrine of its propagation by and healthy part of the city, and consequently were only for a short period, at any one time, immersed in the noxious atmosphere. % In the epidemic of the year 1798, seven persons died of Yellow Fever in our Jims-House. It was ascertained that they had taken the disease in consequence of going out and breathing the atmospheric poison diffused through the more contamimted districts of the city. Although the house then contained about 800 persons,™ communication of contagion took place. C