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for, by its proximity to the original seat of the disorder. It is to be particularly remarked, that in general, the more remote the streets were from Water street, the less of the calamity they experienced.

From the effects of this disorder the French newly settled in Philadelphia, have been in a very remarkable degree exempt.* To what this may be owing, is a subject deserving particular investigation. By some it has been ascribed to their despising the danger. But, though this may have had some effect, it will not certainly account for it altogether; as it is well known that many of the most courageous persons in Philadelphia, have been among its victims. By many of the French, the great fatality of the disorder has been attributed to the vast quantities of crude and unwholesome fruits brought to our markets, and consumed by all classes of people.

When the yellow fever prevailed in South Carolina, the negroes, according to that accurate observer, Dr. Lining, were wholly free from it. "There is something very singular in the constitution of the negroes," says he," which renders them not liable to this fever; for though many of them were as much exposed as the nurses to this infection, yet I never knew one instance of this fever among them, though they are equally subject with the white people to the bilious fever." The same idea prevailed for a considerable time in Philadelphia; but it was erroneous. They did not escape the disorder; however, there were scarcely any of them seized at first, and the number that were finally affected, was not great; and, it is asserted, by an eminent doctor, "it yielded to the power of medicine in them more easily than in the whites." The error that prevailed on this subject had a salutary effect; for, at an early period of the disorder, few white nurses could be procured; and, had the negroes been equally terrified, the sufferings of the sick, great as they actually were, would have been exceedingly aggravated. At the period alluded to, the elders of the African church met, and offered their assistance to the

The French who had been long established here, were nearly as much affected as the natives.

The frequent use the French make of lavements, at all times, may probably account for their escaping so very generally as they did. These purify the bowels, help to discharge the foul matter, and remove costiveness, which is one of the most certain supports of this and various other disorders.

Essays and Observations, vol. ii. page 407.

Mayor, to procure nurses for the sick, and aid in burying the dead. Their offers were accepted; and Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, and William Gray, undertook the management of these two several services. The great demand for nurses, afforded an opportunity for imposition, which was eagerly seized by some of those who acted in that capacity, both coloured and white. They extorted two, three, four, and even five dollars a night for such attendance, as would have been well paid for, by a single dollar. Some of them were even detected in plundering the houses of the sick.

On examining the books of the hospital at Bushhill, it appears, that there were nearly twenty coloured people received there, of whom about three-fourths died.

CHAPTER XIV.

Origin of the Disorder.

THIS disorder has most unquestionably been imported from the West Indies. As yet, however, owing to various obvious reasons, it is difficult to fix, with absolute precision, on the vessel or vessels, (for it is very probable it came in several, from the different infected islands) by which it was introduced. That it is an imported disorder, rests on the following reasons, each of which singly, renders the theory plausible, but all, collectively, establish it to the satisfaction of every candid and reasonable man.

1st. The yellow fever existed in several of the West India Islands a long time before its appearance here.* From which islands various vessels arrived here in July.

* Extract from a London paper, of August 13, 1793.

"The plague, brought from Bulam, which first made its appearance at Grenada, has spread most alarmingly. Eighty persons died in one day at Grenada of this epidemic. The hurricane months just coming on, are not likely to make it less violent in its effects."

["It appears by a subsequent paragraph in the same paper, that the disease was ascertained to be the yellow fever."]

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Extract from the Courier, a London paper, of August 24. Before the fleet left Antigua, so great was the apprehension entertained there of the plague, that all vessels from Grenada, were obliged to perform

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2d. Scarcely any precautions were used to guard against the disorder.

3d. A respectable citizen of Philadelphia, supercargo of one of our vessels, saw, in July, six or seven people sick of this fever on board a brig at Cape François bound for our port.*

4th. A vessel from Cape François, which arrived here in July, lost several of her people with this fever, on her passage. 6th. A person from Cape François, died of this fever at Marcus Hookt-and another at Chester.

7th. The vessels in which those persons arrived, and which were infected with the effluvia of the sick and dead, came freely to our wharves, and particularly to that very one where the disorder made its first appearance.

8th. Persons sick of the yellow fever have been landed in our city from vessels arrived from the West Indies.§

9th. There is the strongest reason to believe, that the beds and bedding of the sick and dead were not destroyed, but, on the contrary, brought into our city.

10th. This disorder had every characteristic symptom that marked it on former occasions, when its importation was unquestioned.

Lastly, Of all the reasons advanced to support the opinion of its having been generated here, the only one, that has even the appearance of plausibility, viz. the influence of a tropical

quarantine; and all letters from the latter island, were smoked at the former. The infection was reported to have reached Dominica."

Extract from the Observer, a London paper, of August 25. "The plague, we are distressed to hear, has made its appearance in several of our West India Islands. At Grenada, and Dominica, the symptoms are said to be highly alarming.”

Extract from a Kingston paper, of October 12.

"The islands of Barbadoes and Dominica continue to be afflicted with a malignant fever: about 300 white inhabitants have perished in the former, and near 500 in the latter."

* To any inquirer I am ready to communicate the name of the supercargo, and the name of the brig.

+I do hereby declare, that I was at Marcus Hook late in July, when a woman, who had been landed there from one of the vessels lately from Cape François, died; that I was informed by a French person, a neighbour, that she died of the yellow fever; that this person burned a quantity of tar at the door, for the purpose, as he informed me, of purifying the air.-JOHN MASSEY. My information of the death of this person is derived from a letter writ ten by Dr. William Martin to Dr. Currie.

§ Major Hodgdon and others can testify to the truth of this.

season, such as we had last summer, is unanswerably refuted by the concurring testimony of Hillary, Lind, Lining, Warren, and Bruce, who, in the most unequivocal manner, have declared that it does not depend on the weather.

"It does not appear, from the most accurate observations of the variations of the weather, or any difference of the seasons, which I have been able to make for several years past, that this fever is any way caused, or much influenced by them; for I have seen it at all times and in all seasons, in the coolest, as well as in the hottest time of the year.'

"This fever does not seem to take its origin from any particular constitution of the weather, independent of infectious miasmata, as Dr. Warren has formerly well observed; for within these twenty-five years, it has been only four times epidemical in this town, namely in the autumns of the years 1732, 39, 45, and 48, though none of those years, (excepting that of 1739, whose summer and autumn were remarkably rainy) were either warmer or more rainy, (and some of them less so) than the summers and autumns were in several other years, in which we had not one instance of any one seized with this fever: which is contrary to what would have happened, if particular constitutions of the weather, were productive of it, without infectious miasmata."+

"In omni anni tempestate, sese effert hic morbus; symptomata autem graviora observantur, ubi calor magnus cum multa humiditate conjungitur."

CHAPTER XV.

State of the weather. Attempt to refute the opinion that cold and rain extinguished the Disorder. Average-table of mortality.

THE weather, during the whole of the months of August and September, and most part of October, was generally remarkably dry and sultry. Rain appeared as if entirely at an end. Various indications, which formerly had rarely failed to produce wet weather, disappointed the expectations, the wishes,

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Hillary on Diseases of Barbadoes, page 146.

Lining, Essays and Observations, political and literary, vol. ii. page 406. Bruce, quoted by Lind on Hot Climates, 227.

and the prayers of the citizens. The disorder raged with increased violence as the season advanced towards the fall months. The mortality was much greater in September, than in August-and still greater in the beginning and till the middle of October, than in September. It very particularly merits attention, that though nearly all the hopes of the inhabitants rested on cold and rain, especially the latter, yet the disorder died away with hardly any rain, and a very moderate degree of cold. Its virulence may be said to have expired on the 23d, 24th, 25th, and 26th of October. The succeeding deaths were, mostly, of those long sick. Few persons took the disorder afterwards. Those days were nearly as warm as many of the most fatal ones; in the middle stage of the complaint, the thermometer being at 60, 59, 71, and 72. To account for this satisfactorily, is above our feeble powers. In fact, the whole of the disorder, from its first appearance to its final close, has set human wisdom and calculation at defiance.

The idea held up in the preceding paragraph, has been controverted by many; and, as the extinction of malignant disorders, generated in summer or the early part of fall, has been universally ascribed to the severe cold and heavy rains of the close of the fall, or the winter, it is asserted that ours must have shared the same fate. It therefore becomes necessary to state the reasons for the contrary opinion.

The extinction of these disorders, according to the generally received idea on this subject, arises from cold, or rain, or both together. If from the former, how shall we account for a greater mortality in September, than in August, whereas the degree of heat was considerably abated? How shall we account for a greater mortality in the first part of October than in September, although the heat was still abating? If rain be the efficient cause of arresting the disorder, as is supposed by those who attribute its declension to the rain on the evening of the 15th of October, how shall we account for the inefficacy of a constant rain during the whole terrible twelfth of October, when one hundred and eleven souls were summoned out of this world, and a hundred and four the day following? To make the matter more plain, I request the reader's attention to the following statement:

The rain on this evening was not by any means so great as that on the 12th.

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