9. Coffee. “About the time,” says Dr. Trotter, “when notice was taken of the putrifying coffee on the wharf at Philadelphia, in the year 1793, a captain of a man of war, just returned from the Jamaica station, informed me, that several vessels laden with the same produce came to Kingston, from St. Domingo. During the distracted state of that colony, this article, with other productions, had been allowed to spoil and ferment. The evolution of a great quantity of fixed air, or carbonic acid gas, was the consequence; and in these vessels, when opening the hatchways, such was its concentrated state, that the whole of the crew, in some of them, were found dead on the deck. A pilot boarded one of them in this condition, and had nearly perished himself[10].”
10. Chocolate shells.
11. Cotton which had been wetted on board of a vessel that arrived in New-York, a few years ago, from Savannah, in Georgia.
12. Hemp, flax, and straw.
13. The canvas of an old tent.
14. Old books, and old paper money, that had been wetted, and confined in close rooms and closets.
15. The timber of an old house. A fever produced by this cause is mentioned by Dr. Haller, in his Bibliotheca Medicinæ.
16. Green wood confined in a close cellar during the summer months. A fever from this cause was once produced in this city, in a family that was attended by the late Dr. Cadwallader.
17. The green timber of a new ship. Captain Thomas Bell informed me, that in a voyage to the East-Indies, in the year 1784, he lost six of his men with the scurvy, which he supposed to be derived wholly from the foul air emitted by the green timber of his ship. The hammocks which were near the sides of the ship rotted during the voyage, while those which were suspended in the middle of the ship, retained their sound and natural state. This scurvy has been lately proved by Dr. Claiborne, in an ingenious inaugural dissertation, published in Philadelphia, in the year 1798, to be a misplaced state of malignant fever. Dr. Lind mentions likewise the timber of new ships as one of the sources of febrile diseases. The timber of soldiers' huts, and of the cabins of men who follow the business of making charcoal in the woods, often produce fevers, as soon as the bark begins to rot and fall from them, which is generally on the second year after they are erected. Fevers have been excited even by the exhalation from trees, that have been killed by being girdled in an old field.