On the local origin of the yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / in a letter from Daniel Blair to John Davy, with appended documents.

  • Blair, Daniel.
Date:
[1851?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the local origin of the yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / in a letter from Daniel Blair to John Davy, with appended documents. 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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    nor, to obtain some information tliereanent, in consequence of being informed by Mr. Van Oueneller of the B. G. Bank, that he was in Surinam in 1836 (the date given by Dr. Fraser), and that yellow fever did not exist there then. Dr. Fraser does not state the exact date of its introduction from Bai'bados. He does not state in what person, or bale of goods, or by what vessel it came. Where is t\iQ corpus delicti? Until the public and the profession here were startled by almost accidentally discovering Dr. Fraser's letter, twelve months after it was written, and twenty months after the epidemic had existed, no one person had ever heard of, or dreamed of, importa- tion, as an imputed cause. Dr. Fraser had never trusted the secret to any one here, — neither the public, his professional friends, or the Government, whose health officer he was. About the time of the outbreak of the new pestilence, we find, in the Government Secretary's office, numerous quarantine communications regarding small pox,— but not one word about yellow fever, the danger of its being im- ported from Barbados, or that it abeady existed from neglect of quarantine regulations. Now these are fatal defects, unless they can be supplied or rectified by Dr. Fraser. Full explanations are the more necessary, as it happens that while our earliest cases in the epi- demic could not in any likelihood have been earlier than the 1st of April, 1837, no yellow fever existed in Barbados during any part of the year. It is worthy of remark, in connection with this subject, that, although an immense intercourse existed between this colony and Barbados, and was not for a single day interrupted during the last lamentable devastations of yellow fever in 1847-48, of which you have had experience, we have been perfectly free from that scourge since 1845. The second material statement of Dr. Fraser is, that the disease was propagated by contagion; and he illustrates this by the cases of Messrs. TVray and Howes, the first who died of the disease in Ber- bice, who evidently contracted it in Demerara, but who had had no known communication with the person or apparel of the sick ; the family of whom did not become affiscted according to the testimony of the medical attendants, and whose cases, according to the same autho- rity, had no relation with any of the subsequent cases in Berbice, ex- cept that of priority. In further illustration of its propagation by contagion, he asserts that Mr. (now Sir Robert) Schomburgk, the traveller, caught the disease by lying in a bed lately occupied by a young man who died of black vomit; that the Indian attendant caught the disease, and that Schomburgk and his retinue carried the epidemic into the sylvan villages of the interior. Now this is pure unmitigated fiction. Robert Schomburgk never had yellow fever, M 3