[35]. Vide the Report itself.
The authentic facts attending the intercourse of the ship’s company with the inhabitants of the island, afford further evidence that no infection could have been communicated by the former to the latter. Thus, it is admitted that Captain Estcourt, the commander of the ship, went directly from the infected vessel to reside with Mr Macaulay, the judge: no infection was communicated to Mr Macaulay, or any part of his family.
The officers of the gun-room—midshipmen, warrant, and engineer—on disembarking from the ship, took a house for themselves and their servants in the town, and mixed unreservedly with the inhabitants: no infection was communicated to any individual with whom they had intercourse.
The crew obtained or took leave to pay frequent visits from the small island to the town of Porto Sal Rey, where, according to Dr M‘William, they resorted chiefly to the house of one Georgio, who kept a spirit store; the only consequence of which visit, considered by Dr M‘William a remarkable one, appears to have been that this man (and “shortly afterwards” two females who associated with them) was attacked with headache and general fever on the evening of the day he was visited by the “Eclair’s” people; a result which admits of a more obvious solution than the communication of febrile contagion on the part of persons who were themselves in perfect health.
The soiled linen of the officers and crew having been brought on shore on the first arrival of the vessel, was immediately given out to be washed to the washerwomen of Porto Sal Rey, and the careful search made after these women, brought to light no fewer than seventeen persons who were so employed.
“The soiled clothes,” says Dr King, “linen, cotton, and flannel, which had accumulated in the officers’ cabin from the time of their departure from Sierra Leone, were contained in at least 12 bags, which were taken on shore at Porto Sal Rey the same evening the ship arrived, and distributed next morning (22nd August) to the washerwomen of the town. Now, if the disease possesses the power of reproduction, its poison must [according to general opinion] have been as certainly communicated through the medium of fomites as by direct contact with the sick on board or at the fort; yet none of the washerwomen nor any in their families were attacked with fever until November, showing an interval of 70 days after exposure to the infection.”
That it was not from any want of susceptibility to the influence of febrile poison that these women escaped the danger of this exposure to fomites was proved by subsequent events; for during the progress of the epidemic, all of these women, according to Dr McWilliam, with only one exception, were attacked with the prevailing fever; two between six and seven weeks after the sailing of the “Eclair;” five, two months; two, three months; three, four months; and one, five months afterwards.
“None of the deaths,” says Dr M‘William, “took place until fever was general in Porto Sal Rey, so that in none of these cases can the occurrence of the fever be fairly attributed to infectious matter conveyed by the linen.”
The Guards at the Fort were many times relieved, and the soldiers were sent direct from the small island to their barracks in Porto Sal Rey, without conveying any disease to their comrades. On one occasion two soldiers who are stated to have lived in a room next to that in which the sick of the “Eclair” were lodged, on being taken ill, were conveyed at once to the barracks, yet they infected no one in their quarters.
From a list drawn up by Dr King, of the names of the islanders who were engaged as labourers on board the “Eclair,” it appears that there were in all 63 persons employed in coaling, watering, and cleansing the ship. These men appear to have had unrestricted communication with the ship’s crew. According to Dr M‘William, the whole of these labourers went to their respective homes every night, except those from Estacia and the Eastern villages, who generally slept at Porto Sal Rey. None of these men were themselves attacked with fever, excepting one (Pathi) whose case has been already considered; none of them communicated fever either to their own families or to the persons with whom they lodged in the town, yet subsequent events proved that they as well as the washerwomen were sufficiently susceptible subjects, since, during the progress of the epidemic, the greater part of them were attacked by the disease; none, however, within a month after the departure of the “Eclair;” a few within two months, but the majority not until four or five months afterwards.