Report on yellow fever / by James Gillkrest.

  • Gillkrest, J. (James), -1853.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on yellow fever / by James Gillkrest. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    into the West Indies. Pere Dutertre would seem to be tbe first by whom details of tbe symptoms and progress of this disease in the West India islands have been transmitted to us.* From the re- markable muscular pains often felt by a_ patient labouring under an attack, as if from heavy blows, it was then called coup de barre; and Pere Dutertre, considering it a new disease when he first saw it (1635), termed it “ the pest unknown pre- viously in these islands.” He notices the yellowness ot Hie skin particularly ; and though he says that the disease was im- ported into the islands by “some ships,” and in another page by a particular ship, “ Le Boeuf, from Rochelle, he^ says that those “were chiefly attacked who were employed in clearing the land in different islands, and were exposed to the poisonous vapours and exhalations.” t , , pit Pere Labat, on landing at Martinique in 1649, found the disease raying in that island, and the monks belonging to the convent of his order suffered severely. He tells us that he himself had the disease twice; that people were frequently attacked so suddenly and severely that they fell down in the streets; that haemorrhages from the several natural orifices, and even from the skin occurred j and that the disease usually proved fatal within five, or six days. He states that the mentioned) quotes (p. 55) Dr. Hunter, respecting the salubrity of Fort Augusta and Stony Hill in 1781-2, in proof of his assertion. On consulting “ Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica,” &c., by John Hunter, M.D., London, 1796, pp. 26 and 27, ye find it is indeed true that that writer speaks favourably of the two above-mentioned localities; but they are expressly pointed out as exceptions, and by way of contrast with the sicldy, nay deadly state, of other parts of the island during the period referred to,—which will abundantly appear from the following quotations At p. 11, Dr. Hunter says, “ Four regiments were sent from England in 1780 to Jamaica; they arrived there the 1st of August, and before the end of January ensuing, not quite six months, one-half of them nearly were dead, and a considerable part of the remainder were unfit for service.” At p, 57, he says, “ An average of the number of sick during three years and a half, in which are included the convalescents, gives one-third of the army unfit for service at the time of the greatest sickness, and one-eighth at the time of the least sickness. The average of deaths annually upon the whole is nearly one in four, and of discharged men about one in eight, which, together, makes the loss three-eighths of the whole. In less than four years there died in the island of Jamaica 3,500 men; those that were discharged amounted to one-half of that number, which make in all 5,250 men lost to the service in that short pei'iod of time from the climate and other causes of mortality, without a man dying by the hands of the enemy.” Speaking of the symptoms of the disease, p. 64, he says, “ The vomiting is some- times constant and violent, especially in the worst kind of the disease, and the blood being frequently in a dissolved state is forced into the stomach and thrown up, forming, what has been called by the Spaniards, the black vomit.” Is it then credible that with this book before him the British Superintendent of Quarantine should write the following, at p. 59 of his second edition? “ These quotations, from the highest authority, prove that for several years before 1793 there was no instance of that species of 'disease prevailing epidemically in the West Indies, which is characterized by black vomiting,” &c. * Histoire Gene'rale des Antilles, t Ibid., p. 81, ed. in 4to.