113 



their arrival, or who sickened in the city and were sent to the hos- 

 pitals, there were many who became victims of the disease at places, 

 more or less distant, in the countries over which they were dis- 

 persed. 



The effect of introducing so great a multitude of persons affected 

 with typhus, or imbued with the fomes of the disease, into the midst 

 of the resident population, could not be otherwise than to excite 

 alarm, and, in fact, to extend the disease. Wherever the emigrant 

 sick were congregated in masses, or collected in small numbers, or 

 wherever individual cases were confined in small, unclean, and ill- 

 ventilated apartments, the disease frequently attacked those who 

 were in constant or occasional communication with them. From 

 such communications nurses, physicians, friends, and transient visitors 

 to the sick, have suffered in numerous instances. Of the medical 

 officers in the New York and neighbouring hospitals and almshouses, 

 not less than eight, mostly in the vigour of early manhood, and 

 while engaged in active duties, giving promise of future distinction 

 in the ranks of the profession, have, during the epidemic, been num- 

 bered with the dead.* 



But though the disease among residents has, in most instances, 

 been traceable to exposure to the poison emanating from the persons 

 and effects of emigrants, there is reason to believe that it has, in 

 some instances, originated de novo in the close and sordid dwellings 

 of the poor in our large sea-port towns ; and that the mortality from 

 the disease has been augmented from such sources. This statement 

 derives support from the circumstance, that the diseases prevalent 

 in our northern Atlantic cities for the last two or three years, and 

 especially in New York, have manifested a decided adynamic diathe- 

 sis, a circumstance indicating, it is believed, the existence of a me- 

 teoratious influence, which not only develops a predisposition to 

 typhus, but favours the production of the poison of the disease. 



As to the mode in which the late typhus, or ship fever, has been 

 propagated, the committee are not disposed to enter into an elabo- 

 rate disquisition. The question whether typhus is diffused by a spe- 

 cific contagious principle, or by a vitiated human effluvium, may be 



* Dr. Harrison states, in his letter before referred to, that " with regard to the ship fever, 

 (at New Orleans,) it has not been complicated with or modified in any way by the yel- 

 low fever. It has been entirely confined to the hospitals, no persons that I have heart! 

 of being attacked out of doors. Several of the visiting physioians, Sisters of Charity, stu- 

 dents, and others of the Charity Hospital, have been attacked, and some have diedj b\n 

 the disease has been confined to the cases I have now mentioned." 



