Report upon yellow fever in Louisiana in 1878 and subsequently / by S.M. Bemiss.

  • Bemiss, S. M. (Samuel Merrifield), 1821-1884.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report upon yellow fever in Louisiana in 1878 and subsequently / by S.M. Bemiss. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    It is so generally true that two formidable diseases do not prevail as epidemics co-existing in the same population, that it is reasonable to assume that a large percentage of deaths returned as due to malarial fever, was really from yellow fever. For my own part, I can affirm that I attended but very few undoubted lualarial cases during the prevalence of yellow fever, and even these few—less than ten—occurred during the early part, and again in the waning of the epi- demic. On the other hand, I attended very many patients through undoubted attacks, who were natives of New Orleans, and who had spent their whole lives in the city. Dr. Dowler, in writing of the liability of native children to yellow fever, uses the following language : Now we will suppose, as in 1867, a sweeping epidemic of yellow fever should make its appearance. A portion of the cases will be called, by certain gentlemen of the faculty, paludal fever, etc. But, as it invariably results, as it did in that year, that such cases appear, spread and disappear ' pari passu ' with the prevailing epiderhic, when the cause of yellow fever disappears also, the proof is plain that the cases have no paludal origin, and that there are no circum- stances of difference of causation ; and, therefore, logically, no difference in the effects of that causation—that is to say, the aforesaid paludal fever, so-called, is one of the types of yellow fever. The logical and historical method teaches us with all the certainty of which any such subject is susceptible, that all individuals, natives or otherwise, however old or young, that have not already undergone the disease, are all equally subject to the disease, and that when we are in possession of the fact of acclimation or non-acclimation we have the means of determining, in the most positive manner, who is to take the disease and who is not, and of determining in a positive manner all the disputed cases that have arisen on symptomological and pathological grounds during previous epidemics. During the late epidemic (1867) I was per- fectly certain that five of my own children would take yel- low fever, and that three would not, and the grounds were that three were born before the epidemic of 1858, and that the five were born subsequently, and the event proved the conclusion. No one who has paid due attention to the logi-