Remarks on the Report of the committee of the Medical Society of this city, on the "Epidemic fever of Bancker Street and its vicinity : in the summer and autumn of 1820."

Date:
[1820]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the Report of the committee of the Medical Society of this city, on the "Epidemic fever of Bancker Street and its vicinity : in the summer and autumn of 1820.". 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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    x We are thus t( We are thus'told, that yellow fever is a specific disease, ** dharafteViztd by malignant symptoms, but what is really wonderful, they tell us in the next breath, that it was fou\d lywg actually enclosed in an ordinary remittent. It wra§ only^fcmting for the super-human keenness of this learned committee to peep through the mantle of one dis- ease, and see the numerous other diseases that lie succes- sively beneath it, and are wrapped up within its convolu- tions. One would suppose, that they were dreaming of the involution of germs, or that they had in their eye the coats of an onion, and that as you peal off these, so you might strip off the diseases to which flesh is heir to,1' until you come down, I suppose, to the skeleton itself! Typhus, they say, (p. 14.) has been applied, by authors, to very dissimilar fevers, viz. to yellow fever, plague, and to jail, hospital, and camp fevers. Now, to know what they mean by jail, and hospital fevers, we will turn back to page 11 : The principal physician in attendance on the hospitals at Bellevue, affirms, that during the months of July, August and September, and the early part of Octo- ber, there occurred at that establishment, a disease exhi- biting many characteristics of the typhus gravior, jail, or hospital fever, accompanied with bilious symptoms, espe- cially among the blacks, such as yellowness of the eyes and skin, epigastric distress, in some instances so great as to render the slightest pressure intolerable.'' By the words '; dissimilar fevers,'* (p. 14.) we learn, that these jail, and hospital fevers, are different fevers from yellow {ever, or from plague. This is corroborated by their note at the foot of page 14, where they say, For the essential charac- ter of these fevers, (i. e. jail, hospital, and camp fevers,) and their difference from yellow fever, or from ordinary bilious remittent, vide Observations, &c. &c.v Now, here is an acknowledgment that yellow fever, the plague, ordi- nary bilious remittent, and jail and hospital fevers, are essentially DIFFERENT from one another.