30 On the Tellonu- Fever of Charleston. 



among others : our commercial intercourse, with the 

 dift'erent ports in the West- Indies, hath been uni- 

 formly and annually continued, for several years past; 

 in all that time, it has never been suspected to have 

 been communicated, by the crews of any of the vessels 

 arriving from thence, to persons in whose houses the 

 sick have lodged, or to those in the hospital to which 

 they have been sent. Moreover, under such circum- 

 stances, how has it happened, that, in the years 1793, 

 1798, and 1803, we had no yellow-fever here, although 

 our communication with those places still continued to 

 go on ? In the year 1793, it prevailed in Philadelphia, 

 to a violent degree. That year we escaped it. In the 

 years 1798 and 1803, we were also free from its ra- 

 vages. Not so the inhabitants of Philadelphia and 

 New- York. This cannot be ascribed to a stricter at- 

 tention, on our part, to quarantine laws and regula- 

 tions ; because, for several years past, whenever the 

 Medical Society of this State has been applied to for 

 their opinion, by the executive authority, in regard X.Q 

 the disease, they have advised, as much as possible, 

 to dispense with a severe quarantine of vessels com- 

 ing frcijn ports where the disease had existed, after 

 being visited by the port-physician, and allowed, by 

 him, to come up; and, in this, they were influenced 

 by a conviction, that it was neither contagious nor im- 

 portable, r^ 



Moreover, if, during those three years, it was im- 

 ported into PhihKJelphia and New- York, how did it 

 r happen that it was not, in like manner, brought to our 

 city, although our trade with the West- Indies conti- 



