Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 3: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
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Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 3: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
The letter of the college of physicians has served to confirm me in an
opinion, that the plagues which occasionally desolated most of the
countries of Europe, in former centuries, and which were always said to
be of foreign extraction, were of domestic origin. Between the years 1006
and 1680, the plague was epidemic fifty-two times all over Europe. It
prevailed fourteen times in the 14th century. The state of Europe, in
this long period, is well known. Idleness, a deficiency of vegetable
aliment, a camp life, from the frequency of wars, famine, an uncultivated
and marshy soil, small cabins, and the want of cleanliness in dress,
diet, and furniture, all concurred to generate pestilential diseases. The
plagues which prevailed in London, every year from 1593 to 1611, and from
1636 to 1649, I believe were generated in that city. The diminution of
plagues in Europe, more especially in London, appears to have been
produced by the great change in the diet and manners of the people; also
by the more commodious and airy forms of the houses of the poor, among
whom the plague _always_ makes its first appearance. It is true, these
plagues were said by authors to have been imported, either directly or
indirectly, from the Levant; but the proofs of such importation were as
vague and deficient as they were of the West-India origin of our
epidemic. The pestilential fevers which have been mentioned, have been
described by authors by the generic name of the plague, but they appear
to have originated from putrid vegetable exhalations, and to have
resembled, in most of their symptoms, the West-India and _North-American_
yellow fever.
I shall resume this interesting subject in another place, in which I
shall mention a number of additional facts, not only in support of the
domestic origin of the bilious yellow fever, but of its not spreading by
contagion, and of course of its being impossible to import it. I shall at
the same time enumerate all its different sources, and point out the
means of destroying or removing them, and thus of exterminating the
disease from our country.
With these observations I conclude the history of the epidemic fever of
the year 1793. A few of its symptoms, which have been omitted in this
history, will be included in the method of cure, for they were discovered
or produced by the remedies which were given for that purpose.
[Hand] The following page begins an account of the states of the
thermometer and weather, from the 1st of January to the 1st of August,
and of the states of the barometer, thermometer, winds, and weather, from
the 1st of August to the 9th of November, 1793. The times of observation,
for the first three months are at 7 in the morning, and 2 in the
afternoon; for the next five months they are at 6 in the morning, and 3
in the afternoon. From the 1st of October to the 9th of November, they
are as in the first three months.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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