Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
Science
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
It was remarkable that persons who worked in the open air, such as
sailors, and 'long-shore-men, (to use a mercantile epithet) had it much
worse than tradesmen who worked within doors. A body of surveyors, in
the eastern woods of Pennsylvania, suffered extremely from it. Even the
vigour of constitution which is imparted by the savage life did not
mitigate its violence. Mr. Andrew Ellicott, the geographer of the United
States, informed me that he was a witness of its affecting the Indians
in the neighbourhood of Niagara with peculiar force. The cough which
attended this disease was so new and so irritating a complaint among
them, that they ascribed it to witchcraft.
It proved most fatal on the sea-shore of the United States.
Many people who had recovered, were affected a second time with all the
symptoms of the disease. I met with a woman, who, after recovering from
it in Philadelphia, took it a second time in New-York, and a third time
upon her return to Philadelphia.
Many thousand people had the disease who were not confined to their
houses, but transacted business as usual out of doors. A perpetual
coughing was heard in every street of the city. Buying and selling were
rendered tedious by the coughing of the farmer and the citizen who met
in market places. It even rendered divine service scarcely intelligible
in the churches.
A few persons who were exposed to the disease escaped it, and some had
it so lightly as scarcely to be sensible of it. Of the persons who were
confined to their houses, not a fourth part of them kept their beds.
It proved fatal (with few exceptions) only to old people, and to
persons who had been previously debilitated by consumptive complaints.
It likewise carried of several hard drinkers. It terminated in asthma
in three persons whose cases came under my notice, and in pulmonary
consumption, in many more. I met with an instance in a lady, who was
much relieved of a chronic complaint in her liver; and I heard of
another instance of a clergyman whose general health was much improved
by a severe attack of this disease.
It was not wholly confined to the human species. It affected two cats,
two house-dogs, and one horse, within the sphere of my observations. One
of the dogs disturbed his mistress so much by coughing at night, that
she gave him ten drops of laudanum for several nights, which perfectly
composed him. One of the cats had a vomiting with her cough. The horse
breathed as if he had been affected by the cynanche trachealis.
The scarlatina anginosa, which prevailed during the summer, disappeared
after the first of October; but appeared again after the influenza left
the city. Nor was the remitting fever seen during the prevalence of the
reigning epidemic.
I inoculated about twenty children for the small-pox during this
prevalence of the influenza, and never saw that disease exhibit a more
favourable appearance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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