Eaton, Dorman B. (Dorman Bridgman), 1823-1899; Public health -- New York (State) -- New York; Sanitation -- New York (State) -- New York
Dr. C. M. Noble, of Waverley, Delaware County, mentions the case of
a merchant of that place, who came to this city with his wife, and
went to one of our most frequented hotels. Being very much fatigued,
they retired to the room provided for them without any particular
examination of it--but found in the morning that they had been put in a
room from which a patient with smallpox had just been removed, without
its having been cleansed. The gentleman was seized with a malignant
form of that disease after his return home. Two deaths and six cases of
smallpox and varioloid resulted from this case.
Dr. S. W. Turner, of Chester, Connecticut, gives also two cases, one
of smallpox and one of varioloid, in that and a neighboring place,
which could be traced to this city.
Dr. Snow, the vigilant Health Officer of Providence, R. I., states that
smallpox is rarely known in that city, except when imported from New
York.
[Sidenote: New York Inoculates the Nation]
I could repeat these details until it was shown that nearly every town
in the State, and nearly every city in the country, has been inoculated
by New York with this most loathsome disease. The most striking and
most melancholy instances of the free dissemination of contagion are
found in the army, where whole regiments have been stricken with
smallpox through infected clothing manufactured at the homes of the
poor, where the disease was prevailing. But these are facts too well
known to every medical man, and even to the community, to require
further illustration.
What terror smallpox creates in country towns when it attacks its first
victim, you very well know. The house where it occurs is quarantined,
and not unfrequently the sufferer is deserted by his friends, and left
to recover or die, as the case may be. Business with the country is
often suspended by the placards posted upon the highways, with the
terrifying word “Smallpox” upon them, and a finger pointing ominously
to the town. In nine cases out of ten, another finger should point
toward New York, as the source of the pestilence.
It has been estimated by a competent observer, that every case of
smallpox in a country town costs, by derangement of business alone,
more money than is annually expended upon its public schools. If
we add to this pecuniary loss the feverish excitement and popular
apprehension, and the sufferings and probable death of the victim from
want of proper care, we may but indifferently estimate the cost to the
country of the prevalence of this disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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