“The crew of the Bangalore, on her arrival at Port au Prince, consisted of twenty-eight men. With them no preventive plan was followed. In a very few weeks eight died, and at present, of the original number, but fourteen remain.”
All these depleting remedies, whether used separately or together, induce such an artificial debility in the system, as disposes it to vibrate more readily under the impression of the miasmata. Thus the willow rises, after bowing before a blast of wind, while the unyielding oak falls to the ground by its side. It is from the similarity of the natural weakness in the systems of women, in the West-Indies, with that which has been induced by the artificial means that have been mentioned, that they so generally escape the malignant endemic of the islands.
A second class of preventives of malignant fever are such as obviate the internal action of miasmata, by exciting a general or partial determination to the external surface of the body. These are,
1. The warm bath. I have known this grateful remedy used with success in our city. It serves the treble purposes of keeping the skin clean, and the pores open, and of defending what are called the vital organs from disease, by inviting its remote cause to the external surface of the body.
2. The cold bath, or cold water applied to the external surface of the body. Ulloa, in his travels through Cuba, tells us the Spaniards make it a practice, when partially wetted by the rain, to plunge themselves, with their wet clothes on, into the first stream of water they meet with afterwards, by which means they avoid taking the fever of the island. Where this cannot be conveniently done, the peasants strip off their clothes, and put them under a shelter, and receive showers of rain upon their naked bodies, and thus preserve themselves from the fever. Dr. Baynard has left it upon record, in his treatise upon the cold bath, that those persons who lived in water-mills, also watermen, bargemen, and fishermen, who were employed upon the river, and in dabbling in cold water, were rarely affected by the plague in London, in 1665, and that but two persons died with it on London bridge. The water carriers at Cairo, Mr. Volney says, uniformly escape the plague; and Dr. Chisholm informs us, that those negroes in Demarara who go naked, and are thereby disposed not to avoid showers of rain, are never affected with the fever of that country.
3. Washing the body, every morning and evening, with salt water. A whole ship's crew from Philadelphia was preserved by this means from the yellow fever, some years ago, in one of the West-India islands, while a large proportion of the crews of several ships, that lay in the same harbour, perished by that disease.
4. Anointing the body with oil. The natives of Africa, and some American Indians, use this preventive with success during their sickly seasons. It has lately been used, it is said, with effect in preventing the plague. Its efficacy for that purpose was first suggested by no oilman having died of that disease during four years, in which time 100,000 people perished with it in Egypt. Oliver, in his Travels into that country, says the men who make and sell butter, are equally fortunate in escaping it.
5. Issues, setons, and blisters belong to this class of preventives of malignant and bilious fevers. Issues, according to Parisinus, Florentinus, Forestus, and several other authors quoted by Diemerbroeck, have prevented the plague in many hundred instances. Paræus says, all who had ulcers from the venereal disease, or any other cause, escaped it. Dr. Hodges owed his preservation from the plague in London, in 1665, to an issue in his leg. He says he always felt a slight pain in it when he went into a sick room. Dr. Gallaher ascribed his escape from the yellow fever of 1799 to a perpetual blister, which he applied to his arm for that purpose. Dr. Barton favoured me with the sight of a letter from Dr. James Stevens, dated January 12, 1801, in which he says he believed Dr. Beach (formerly of Connecticut) had been preserved from the bilious fever by a seton in his side. He adds further, that Dr. Beach had been called to attend the labourers at the Onandoga salt springs, in the state of New-York, ninety-eight of whom out of a hundred had the bilious fever. Of the two who escaped it, one had a sore leg, the other what is called a scald-head. The discharge from the sores in each of them, as well as from the doctor's issue, was more copious during the prevalence of the fever, than it had been at any other time.