Eaton, Dorman B. (Dorman Bridgman), 1823-1899; Public health -- New York (State) -- New York; Sanitation -- New York (State) -- New York
But, sir, acute diseases, and those frequently of the most destructive
character, prevail at all seasons among the tenant-house population,
and generally with fearful fatality. Although the last summer and
autumn were unusually healthy, these records show the prevalence of a
vast amount of diseases among the poor of New York. These diseases are
of a kind that always originate in or are aggravated by the crowding
of families in unventilated apartments, want of sunlight and pure air,
house and street filth, etc.
First Ward: The diseases prevalent in this district the past season
have been principally typhus, measles, diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera
morbus, cholera infantum, and marasmus. Diarrhoeal diseases are most
prevalent in those insalubrious quarters already described, and at
a season when the exciting causes are at their greatest stage of
development and activity.
Second and Third Wards: Typhus fever made its appearance in
tenant-houses, and in two or three instances spread through all the
families immediately exposed. At one place the disease attacked
successively every member of the family immediately exposed, but was
prevented from spreading further by free ventilation.
Fifth Ward: The slips, in consequence of receiving the sewerage of the
district and surrounding parts of the city, are generally foul and
the undoubted source of much sickness. Smallpox has prevailed more
extensively than for many years back. Typhus and typhoid fevers have
been prevalent over the whole district.
Eighth Ward: The prevailing diseases of the past season have been
fevers of the typhus, typhoid, remittent and intermittent types,
cholera infantum, scarlatina, dysentery, and diarrhoea, all confined to
densely populated tenements. The typhus and typhoid fevers have been of
a malignant type in two houses, twelve out of eighteen cases proving
fatal.
Ninth Ward: The prevailing diseases during the past season have been
typhoid fever, dysentery, diarrhoea, scarlet fever, measles, and a few
cases of variola.
[Sidenote: Seeds of Disease Uncontrolled]
Sixth Ward: The seeds of disease exist everywhere, and although
removable and susceptible of sanitary control, they are yet
uncontrolled, and at any time may spring into activity and a terrific
life, that shall only have the power and effect of death. Cholera,
when it visits these shores again, will first break forth here, if
proper sanitary measures be neglected. Typhus fever nests exist in
all parts of the district; and it has been traced from these nests to
every ward in the city, spreading the disease not only in the worst
localities, but into the homes of the industrious, the wealthy, and the
highest classes of society. This disease is now on the increase, and if
proper sanitary measures are not adopted to remove the predisposing and
the infecting causes, we may again have an epidemic of that scourge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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