A brief history of the influenza, which prevailed in New-York in 1807.

  • Ricketson, Shadrach, 1766-1839.
Date:
[1807]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A brief history of the influenza, which prevailed in New-York in 1807. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    olence of coughing, or by accelerated pneumonic and other pulmonic complaints. All those cases are, I suppose, included in the bills of mortality under the name of Influenza ; but these are ad- mitted to be often inaccurate. Perhaps no disease has ever been observed to affect so many people in so short a time, as the Influenza, almost a whole city, town, or neighbourhood becoming affected in. a few days ; indeed much sooner than could be supposed to spread from contagion. Mercatus relates, that when it prevailed in Spain, in 1557, the greatest part of the people were seized in one day. Dr. Glass says, when it was rife in Exeter, in 1729, two thousand were attacked in one night. Notwithstanding the general opinion long entertained, and handed down from one physician to another, of the contagious nature of this disorder, it is hoped there are now sufficient observations and incontestable facts to ques- tion, and even to disprove that idea: to adduce all which, would lead beyond the limits of this essay. I have received no authentic information of any neigh- bouring city, town, or part of the country, being affected with it before this city ; but about the same time, or soon afterwards, it extended rapidly in every direction. On revising my notes which I preserved of the Influen- za, in the autumn of 1789, in Dutchess county, I find it re- marked, that the disease appeared first to the south- ward, and travelled gradually northward and eastward till it pervaded the continent. Dr. Rush, in his account of the disease in that year, re- marks, that he first observed it in Philadelphia, in some members of congress who arrived there from New-York. From which account, and from its appearing here the last time, it is evident, that this city has been twice the origin and centre of the disorder; but to what particular exciting or remote cause, whether to a certain state, modification, or change of the atmosphere, or to some other latent princi- ple we may impute it, is not yet clearly ascertained, and must be left to be determined by accurate observation and future experience. Various conjectures were formed respecting the succeed- ing health of the city ; some predicting, with much cer-i tainty, that it was a precursor of the typhus icteroides, or yellow fever, which has so frequently and severely visited this place ; but experience has shown the fallacy of such an,