To the same purpose Dr. Mosely says, “Warren, though he lived at Barbadoes in 1739, supposes it never appeared in that island till about the year 1721, and that it was then brought from Martinique in the Lynn man of war. He says the second appearance of it there was in 1733, and that it then came also from Martinique. He undertakes to show, that it is a disease of Asiatic extract; and says, that a Provencale fleet arrived at Port St. Pierre in Martinique, from Marseilles, on board which were several bales of Levant goods which were taken in at Marseilles from a ship just arrived from St. Jean D’Acre (probably the Ptolemais of the ancients.) Upon opening these bales of goods at Port St. Pierre, this distemper immediately shewed itself; many of the people were instantly seized, some died almost suddenly, others in a few days, and some lingered longer; and the contagion, still spreading, made great havock at the beginning. He says he had this account from Mr. Nelson, an English surgeon, who was seized with the disease at Martinique, and died of it a few days after his arrival at Barbadoes. He says, it is very probable that the same fever, or one of very near resemblance and affinity, may first have been carried among the American Spaniards (among whom it is now endemic) in somewhat a like manner; and that possibly some peculiar qualities in the air and climate might have fostered and maintained it there ever since.”
Dr. Mosely at once concludes the whole of this account to be fabulous, but whether fabricated by Dr. Warren or the surgeon, he does not say. He then appeals to Dr. Towne, who wrote before Warren, in 1776, but takes no notice of this chimerical origin of the yellow fever, but considers it as an endemical disease in the West Indies. Hillary’s opinion already given is also quoted.
The next evidence is that of Mr. Hughes, who, though not a medical man, has written on the first appearance of the yellow fever in Barbadoes in the following terms: Dr. Gamble remembers that it was very “fatal here in the year 1691, and that it was then called the new distemper, and afterwards Kendal’s fever, the pestilential fever, and the bilious fever. The same symptoms did not always appear in all patients, nor alike in every year when it visited us. It is most commonly rife and fatal in May, June, July and August, and then mostly among strangers; though a great many of the inhabitants, in the year 1696, died of it; and a great many at different periods since.”
As to the first appearance of the disease in the West India islands we have no accounts which have been deemed sufficiently authentic, though indeed it must be confessed that the doubts seem to be derived as much from an attachment to theory as to the investigation of truth. “The endemial causus, or yellow fever, (says Dr. Mosely) which is the terror of Europeans newly arrived in the West Indies, is called by the French la maladie de Siam. Monsieur Pouppe Desportes, who practised physic at St. Dominique from 1732 to 1748, and who had more experience, and has written from better information on the diseases of that colony, than any of his countrymen, says that this fever was so called from its being first taken notice of in the island of Martinique at a time when some vessels were there from Siam. This account, though probably true enough as to the time of its being first observed in the French colonies, is extremely incorrect in other respects: for M. Desportes has not only admitted a supposition that the disease originated among these East Indian mariners, but calls it pestilential, and says that the Europeans are almost the only victims to it.
“The generality of the French writers say that it was brought directly from Siam, in a merchant ship, and communicated to the people of Martinique, whence the contagion was carried to St. Dominique, but that sailors were the only people attacked by it, whence it was called la fievre matelotte.”
This account seems to carry no improbability in it; nevertheless Dr. Mosely rejects it upon grounds that are very far from being indisputable. “The French writers (says he) have not been at the trouble to consider that a disease brought from Siam in the East Indies, in a similar latitude to the West India islands, would be most likely to affect the natives, living in a climate similar to that in which the disease originated, rather than the Europeans of so different a temperament of body.” But this argument would prove too much; for if the disease would be most likely to affect the natives in a climate similar to that in which the disease originated, surely it would be still more likely to attack the natives in that very climate in which the disease did originate, and that Europeans would be free. But the very reverse is the case. The disease, according to Dr. Moseley himself, originates in the West Indies; and yet Europeans, especially those newly arrived, are particularly objects of its vengeance.
“But (adds our author) the fact is, that this disease never attacks either white or black natives of hot climates; neither was it brought from Siam; and though it is possible, from the heat of the climate, that it may frequently appear there, or in any other tropical country (though Barrere says it is unknown at Cayenne) no history of that country that I have yet met with mentions such a disease; notwithstanding what many writers have boldly advanced to the contrary.”
Here it is evident we have no argument, but a parcel of assertions, the first of which contradicts what he had just before quoted from Mr. Hughes. For the latter informs us that in 1696 a great many of the inhabitants died of it as well as strangers. His not meeting with it in any history of Siam is not a proof of its non-existence in the country, neither indeed does he himself think that it is so, as he tells us that it may possibly appear there, or in any other tropical country.
In Sauvages’s Nosology we find the plague distinguished into a number of different species, among which there is one called the plague of Siam. This, he says, was in the year 1685 brought from Siam to Martinico, in the ship called the Oriflame. This seems to have been the yellow fever, and the symptoms are considered in the following section. This date agrees exactly with what Mr. Hughes says in the place above quoted, that it was violent in Barbadoes in the year 1691, when it went by the names of the new fever, and Kendal’s fever. Both these names imply that the disease had been but lately known, and that it was by no means a native of the climate. It must either have been imported therefore from some other country, or it must have originated in consequence of the settlement of some Europeans in a climate so dissimilar to their own, while some of them still continued to ramble from one country to another, occasionally visiting all, without taking up their residence in any.
Martinique seems to have been the first place where this distemper made its appearance; and from thence it seems quickly to have extended itself to St. Domingo and Barbadoes. Its farther progress, however, cannot be traced, nor can we tell exactly what time it first entered the continent. Whether the true plague was ever imported into the Western Continent cannot at present be ascertained, neither can we tell what diseases the Indians were subject to before the arrival of the Europeans. The Spaniards, who first arrived, are allowed to have been less subject to the plague than other nations,[143] but they were quickly followed by those who had no such exemption. Sebastian Cabot discovered the North American Continent for Henry VII of England, very soon after, if not before Columbus discovered the Southern Continent for the king of Spain. This was a very suspicious time; for Henry VII himself had introduced the sweating sickness into England only thirteen years before;[144] and in those days the plague seems never to have been eradicated; so that it is by no means impossible that these first adventurers might have communicated to the Indians with whom they had any communication, the seeds of diseases totally unknown to them before. Certain it is, that the North American Indians were subject to epidemics before the settlement of any English colonies among them. Hutchinson in his History of Massachusetts takes notice of the Indians having been greatly weakened by an epidemic, which was attributed to an unfavourable season, in consequence of which they were obliged to feed upon unripe squashes, fruits, &c. We know not the nature of the distemper, though, from the circumstance just mentioned, we may not unreasonably conjecture it to have been of the pestilential kind. That epidemics still continue among these people we also know from the testimony of Capt. Carver, who found one of their towns deserted, and the inhabitants fled into the woods, on account of an epidemic disorder; but what the nature of it was he does not inform us.[145]