92 ANTIQUITIES IN TENNESSEE. 



disease. I have discoursed with some Indians who were then youths, who say that 

 the bodies all over loere exceedimjhj yelloiv (describing it by a yellow garment they 

 showed me) both before they died and afterwards." Noah Webster^ concludes from 

 this account, that the ^'■pestilence was the true American plague called yellow fever," 

 and he sustains this view by the statement in Prince's Chronology, that the fever 

 was attended with hemorrhage from the nose. Webster cites this as an example 

 of the origin of yellow fever in this country. This supposition cannot be main- 

 tained, as the pestilence prevailed in the winter with the greatest severity ; and we 

 are not justified in adopting the conclusion of Webster, simply because there was 

 a general yellowness of the skin attended with hemorrhages from the nose. 



About 1745, a malignant epidemic disease prevailed amongst the Indians, but 

 did not affect the whites, and which in like manner Webster considered as the 

 "infectious yellow fever." The patients are said to have first complained of a 

 severe pain in the head and back, which was followed by fever. In three or four 

 days the skin turned as yellow as gold, a vomiting of black matter took place, and 

 generally a bleeding at the nose and mouth, which continued till the patient died. 

 These symptoms resemble, to a certain extent, those of the disease known to the 

 Mexicans as Matlazahuatl ; and also those which characterize the malarial 

 hcematuria, which, since the civil war, has prevailed to a considerable extent in 

 the Southern States, and has been attended with, a high rate of mortality. The 

 Indians, in common with the whites, were subject to the various forms of malarial 

 fever (intermittent, remittent, and congestive, and malarial hfematuria) and it is 

 well known that in the first settlement of both North and South America, the 

 Spanish, French, and English colonists suffered terribly from these diseases. Many 

 of the most flourishing and populous settlements were in a few years almost 

 depopulated by these fevers, which committed the greatest ravages in those towns 

 and colonies which were located near the mouths of large rivers, in low marshy 

 regions. Entire armies were thus destroyed. The pioneers who cleared the 

 forests and drained the low-lands were either suddenly cut off by these high 

 grades of bilious fevers which were often attended with a universal yellowness of 

 the skin (jaundice) and incessant vomiting of bilious matter which was sometimes 

 mixed with blood (black vomit) ; or were slowly poisoned by the malaria of the 

 marshes and swamps, and dragged out a miserable existence, rendered almost 

 intolerable by enlargement of the spleen and liver, by derangement of the blood 

 and nervous system, and by neuralgia and dropsy. In that form of malarial fever 

 characterized by complete jaundice, intense vomiting, nausea, and hemorrhage from 

 the kidneys, which has received different names at various times and in divers 

 countries, and which is no " new disease," even in the United States, the hemor- 

 rhage from the kidneys is preceded by congestion of these organs, and is attended 

 with desquamation of the excretory cells and tubuli urinifcri. Whilst some 

 of the symptoms, as the nausea and incessant vomiting — and in extreme cases 

 black vomit,— the deep jaundice, and impeded capillary circulation, resemble 

 those of yellow fever, yet there are marked differences between the two diseases. 



» History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, etc., 1799, vol. i, pp. ITG-ITT. 



