Travels through the states of North America, and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 [Vol. 1 of 2]Weld, Isaac
History
Travels through the states of North America, and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 [Vol. 1 of 2]
Weld, Isaac
Canada -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; United States -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
The disorder has been treated very differently by different
physicians, and as some few have survived under each system that has
been tried, no general one has yet been adopted. I was told, however,
by several people in Norfolk, who resided in the most sickly part of
the town during the whole time the fever lasted, that as a
preventative medicine, a strong mercurial purge was very generally
administered, and afterwards Peruvian bark; and that few of those who
had taken this medicine were attacked by the fever. All however that
can be done by medicine to stop the progress of the disorder, when it
has broke out in a town, seems to be of no very great effect; for as
long as the excessive hot weather lasts the fever rages, but it
regularly disappears on the approach of cold weather. With regard to
its origin there have been also various opinions; some have contended
that it was imported into every place where it appeared from the West
Indies; others, that it was generated in the country. These opinions
have been ably supported on either side of the question by medical
men, who resided at the different places where the fever has appeared.
There are a few notorious circumstances, however, which lead me, as an
individual, to think that the fever has been generated on the American
continent. In the first place, the fever has always broken out in
those parts of towns which were most closely built, and where the
streets have been suffered through negligence to remain foul and
nasty; in the second place, it has regularly broken out during the
hottest time of the year, in the months of July and August, when the
air on the American coast is for the most part stagnant and sultry,
and when vegetable and animal matter becomes putrid in an incredible
short space of time; thirdly, numbers of people died of the disorder
in New York, in the year 1796, notwithstanding that every West Indian
vessel which entered the port that season was examined by the health
officer, a regular bred physician, and that every one suspected was
obliged to perform quarantine. The people in New York are so fully
persuaded that the fever originates in America from putrid matter,
that they have stopped up one or two docks, which were receptacles for
the filth of the neighbourhood, and which contaminated the air when
the tide was out.
[Sidenote: YELLOW FEVER.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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