Further observations on that portion of the second report on quarantine by the General Board of Health, which relates to the yellow fever epidemy on board H.M.S. Eclair, and at Boa Vista in the Cape de Verde Islands / by J.O. M'William.

  • MacWilliam, John Ormiston, 1808-1862.
Date:
1852
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Further observations on that portion of the second report on quarantine by the General Board of Health, which relates to the yellow fever epidemy on board H.M.S. Eclair, and at Boa Vista in the Cape de Verde Islands / by J.O. M'William. 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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    0B8ERYATI0 N S5 &c. I bad imagined, that all doubt regarding the real nature of the epidemy that prevailed at Boa Vista, during the years 1845-6, had long since been at an end; and it can scarcely be said, that this conclusion was arrived at either hastily or unwarrantably. My Report “On the Fever at Boa Vista,” was delivered to Sir William Burnett, a few days after my arrival in Eng- land from the Cape de Verdes, in the month of September, 1846, and was laid before the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty on the 30th October, of the same year, with a letter from the Director-General, in which he stated, that he “ could not arrive at the conclusion, that the fever was occa- sioned by the intercourse with the Eclair.” The Report, and the letter of Sir William Burnett, having been presented to the House of Commons, in pursuance of their address of the 16th March, 1847, were ordered to be printed. And both documents being thus brought before the Profession, were very prominently and fully reviewed in the leading medical journals of the United Kingdom, of France, and of America, the greater number of which had been hitherto opposed to the contagion of yellow fever. On the Boa Vista question, however, there was an unanimity of opinion, almost, if not wholly, unprecedented in a case of this kind ; for, with one very qualified exception, B