Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Following Is The Series Of Pathological Facts, Considered In
Their Simplest Point Of View.
When a great number of persons, born
in a cold climate, arrive at the same period in a port of the
torrid zone, not particularly dreaded by navigators, the typhus of
America begins to appear.
Those persons have not had typhus during
their passage; it appears among them only after they have landed.
Is the atmospheric constitution changed? or is it that a new form
of disease develops itself among individuals whose susceptibility
is highly increased?
The typhus soon begins to extend its ravages among other Europeans,
born in more southern countries. If propagated by contagion, it
seems surprising that in the towns of the equinoctial continent it
does not attach itself to certain streets; and that immediate
contact* does not augment the danger, any more than seclusion
diminishes it. (* In the oriental plague (another form of typhus
characterised by great disorder of the lymphatic system) immediate
contact is less to be feared than is generally thought. Larrey
maintains that the tumified glands may be touched or cauterized
without danger; but he thinks we ought not to risk putting on the
clothes of persons attacked with the plague. - Memoire sur les
Maladies de l'Armee Francoise en Egypte page 35.) The sick, when
removed to the inland country, and especially to cooler and more
elevated spots, to Xalapa, for instance, do not communicate typhus
to the inhabitants of those places, either because the disease is
not contagious in its nature, or because the predisposing causes
are not the same as in the regions of the shore. When there is a
considerable lowering of the temperature, the epidemic usually
ceases, even on the spot where it first appeared. It again breaks
out at the approach of the hot season, and sometimes long before;
though during several months there may have been no sick person in
the harbour, and no ship may have entered it.
The typhus of America appears to be confined to the shore, either
because persons who bring the disease disembark there, and goods
supposed to be impregnated with deleterious miasms are there
accumulated; or because on the sea-side gaseous emanations of a
particular nature are formed. The aspect of the places subject to
the ravages of typhus seems often to exclude all idea of a local or
endemical origin. It has been known to prevail in the Canaries, the
Bermudas, and among the small West India Islands, in dry places
formerly distinguished for the great salubrity of their climate.
Examples of the propagation of the yellow fever in the inland parts
of the torrid zone appear very doubtful: that malady may have been
confounded with remitting bilious fevers. With respect to the
temperate zone, in which the contagious character of the American
typhus is more decided, the disease has unquestionably spread far
from the shore, even into very elevated places, exposed to cool and
dry winds, as in Spain at Medina-Sidonia, at Carlotta, and in the
city of Murcia. That variety of phenomena which the same epidemic
exhibits, according to the difference of climate, the union of
predisposing causes, its shorter or longer duration, and the degree
of its exacerbation, should render us extremely circumspect in
tracing the secret causes of the American typhus. M. Bailly, who,
at the time of the violent epidemics in 1802 and 1803, was chief
physician to the colony of St. Domingo, and who studied that
disease in the island of Cuba, the United States, and Spain, is of
opinion that the typhus is very often, but not always, contagious.
Since the yellow fever has made such ravages in La Guayra,
exaggerated accounts have been given of the uncleanliness in that
little town as well as of Vera Cruz, and of the quays or wharfs of
Philadelphia. In a place where the soil is extremely dry, destitute
of vegetation, and where scarcely a few drops of water fall in the
course of seven or eight months, the causes that produce what are
called miasms, cannot be of very frequent occurrence. La Guayra
appeared to me in general to be tolerably clean, with the exception
of the quarter of the slaughter-houses. The sea-side has no beach
on which the remains of fuci or molluscs are heaped up; but the
neighbouring coast, which stretches eastward towards Cape Codera,
and consequently to the windward of La Guayra, is extremely
unhealthy. Intermitting, putrid, and bilious fevers often prevail
at Macuto and at Caravalleda; and when from time to time the breeze
is interrupted by a westerly wind, the little bay of Cotia sends
air loaded with putrid emanations towards the coast of La Guayra,
notwithstanding the rampart opposed by Cabo Blanco.
The irritability of the organs being so different in the people of
the north and those of the south, it cannot be doubted, that with
greater freedom of commerce, and more frequent and intimate
communication between countries situated in different climates, the
yellow fever will extend its ravages in the New World. It is even
probable that the concurrence of so many exciting causes, and their
action on individuals so differently organized, may give birth to
new forms of disease and new deviations of the vital powers. This
is one of the evils that inevitably attend rising civilization.
The yellow fever and the black vomit cease periodically at the
Havannah and Vera Cruz, when the north winds bring the cold air of
Canada towards the gulf of Mexico. But from the extreme equality of
temperature which characterizes the climates of Porto Cabello, La
Guayra, New Barcelona, and Cumana, it may be feared that the typhus
will there become permanent, whenever, from a great influx of
strangers, it has acquired a high degree of exacerbation.
Tracing the granitic coast of La Guayra westward, we find between
that port (which is in fact but an ill-sheltered roadstead) and
that of Porto Cabello, several indentations of the land, furnishing
excellent anchorage for ships.
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