A Memoir on Contagion, More Especially as It Respects the Yellow Fever: Read in Convention of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, on the 3d of June, 1817 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Memoir on Contagion, More Especially as It Respects the Yellow Fever: Read in Convention of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, on the 3d of June, 1817

The reader will easily perceive that the folo lowing Memoir is not intended as a s the sub ject of contagion. The im of condensing a copious mass of materials, within the limits of a sin gle discourse, is obvious; hence the style and manner appear sententious and didactick. From the nature of the occasion that called it into existence, it is some times declamatory. The frequent repetitions can be excused only on the ground of attempting to place a controverted question, in all the attitudes of which it is susceptible.

However imperfect or exceptionable the opinions expressed may appear to the critick, they are the te sult of some reflection, and an assiduous attention to the phenomena of pestilential diseases. Especially the yellow fever. All the reasoning, and many of the facts, are contained in a series of letters addressed to Dr. Rush, commencing 28th October, 1793, and the 4th of June, 1797. When the irruption of the yellow fever was experienced at Philadelphia, in 1793, I was the private pupil of Dr. Rush; and, as will be perceiv ed in the sequel, was casually absent. On the 2otb of August, I addressed a letter to my preceptor, de scribing an unusually malignant fever, then prevailing in Caroline. Between this date and the 28th of Octo her, an unremitted observance of the phenomena of the disease, and the causes that manifestly occasioned it.

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