Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
History
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
It is not peculiar, I believe, to a bilious and yellow fever, when much
protracted beyond its ordinary duration, to put on the symptoms of the
jail fever. The same appearances occur in the pleurisy, and in other, of
what Dr. Sydenham calls _intercurrent_ fevers, all of which I have no
doubt, under certain circumstances of filth, confinement, and long
duration, would produce a fever in persons who were exposed to it. This
fever, if the weather were cold, would probably put on inflammatory
symptoms, and be added, in our nosologies, to the class of contagious
diseases.
From the necessary influence of time, in thus rendering fevers of all
kinds now and then contagious by excretion, it follows, that the yellow
fever, when of its usual short duration, is incapable of generating that
excretion, and that, instead of being considered as the only form of
bilious fever that possesses a power of propagating itself, it should be
considered as the only one that is devoid of it.
4. Miasmata, whether from marshes, or other external sources, acting upon
a system previously impregnated with the excreted matters which produce
the jail or ship fever. Mr. Lempriere informs us, that he saw what were
supposed to be cases of yellow fever communicated by some sailors who
brought the seeds of the ship fever with them to the island of Jamaica.
The fevers which affected most of the crews of the Hussar frigate,
mentioned by Dr. Trotter[29], and of the Busbridge Indiaman, described
by Mr. Bryce[30], appear to have been the effect of the combined
operation of foul air in those ships, and human excretions, upon their
systems. The disease was barely tinged with bilious symptoms, and hence
the facility with which it was cured, for the jail fever more readily
yields to medicine than the yellow fever. The former was probably excited
by some latent exhalation from dead matters in the holds of the ships,
and hence we find it ceased on shore, where it was deprived of its
exciting cause. It is true, great pains were taken to clean the hold and
decks of the Busbridge, but there are foul matters which adhere to the
timbers of ships, and which, according to Dr. Lind, are sometimes
generated by those timbers when new, that are not to be destroyed by any
of the common means employed for that purpose. Of this Dr. Kollock has
furnished us with a most satisfactory proof, in his history of the yellow
fever, which prevailed on board of the frigate General Greene, on her
voyage to the Havanna, in the year 1799. "The air in the hold of the
vessel (says the doctor) was so contaminated, as to extinguish lights
immediately, and candles in the cockpit were almost as useless from the
same cause. The fish were thrown overboard, and the decks washed and
scoured, the ventilator and wind sails put in motion, and every measure
of purification adopted that their situation allowed; notwithstanding
these precautions disease invaded us. The men were unceasing in their
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