The New-Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Devoted to Medicine and the Collateral Sciences, Vol. 2

Book excerpt: Excerpt from The New-Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Devoted to Medicine and the Collateral Sciences, Vol. 2: For 1845-46 Infectious air from the hold of a ship. Or from clothes or goods. Or from a trunk, might destroy a few individuals exposed to its influence but it could not go far; it would soon be diluted so as to become innocuous or should it become modified in some way in an impure atmosphere. Then it would no longer be the same disease. One fact is here introduced to illustrate this position. In 1817, a barge left this city with goods for a store keeper at Bayou Sara during the passage up the river, and shortly after the arrival of the barge, every one of the crew and passengers died of yellow fever. The goods were landed and conveyed to the store; and the store keeper who opened the packages, although he was warned not to do so, sickened and died of yellow fever; but no other person in the neighborhood contracted the disease. The whole subject is then narrowed down to the question of contagion. It is asked; why do we hear nothing of the yellow fever having prevailed on this continent, and in the West India Islands, before they were discovered and inhabited by Europeans; why then would we ask, do we hear nothing of bilious and congestive and typhus fevers, and divers other diseases, unknown to this continent, anterior to that period. Will any one say that bilious and congestive and typhus fevers are imported? Yet there was a time when they were no more known on this continent than yellow fever. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.