YELLOW FEVER PROPHYLAXIS IN NEW ORLEANS 45 



6. No Divided Authority in New Orleans. 



Public Health and Marine Hospital Service. 



„ „ New Orleans, August 22, 1Q05. 



To Officers in Charge of Wards. 



As there seems to be some misapprehension on the part of the 0£5.cers in charge of 

 the various Wards, relative to their duties and responsibilities in the matter of the 

 sanitary survey of the City which is to be undertaken (concerning which Circular 

 Letter dated Aug. 21st was addressed to them), all Officers are informed that they are 

 m full charge of all measures in their several Wards ; that there is no division of 

 authority, and that the work contemplated in the Circular Letter above referred to will 

 be under their sole supervision, and will be conducted along with, and in addition to, 

 their other duties. 



J. H. White. 



7. Beware of False Remedies. 



Comment upon the following is unnecessary. 



Public Health and Marine Hospital Service. 



New Orleans, August 22, 1905. 

 To the Press of the City of New Orleans. 



While under ordinary circumstances I would not pay any attention at all to the 

 claims of Dr. R. B. L., I feel that under present conditions when every effort is being 

 directed towards the eradication of Yellow Fever in the City, along rational lines, and 

 when the hearty co-operation of all citizens is necessary to the success of this effort, it 

 is inadvisable to allow the attention of the people to be drawn away from proper 

 methods and devoted to the discussion of fads, and, in order to demonstrate that this 

 claim is not based on proper scientific efforts I submit the following facts ; — 



In February, 1898, this same man submitted to Congress a memorial in which he 

 claimed, by this same arsenization method, to render persons immune, not only to 

 Yellow Fever but to cholera and bubonic plague. This memorial was submitted to 

 the then Surgeon-General of the U.S. Army, George M. Sternberg, one of the foremost 

 medical men in the world, and by him pronounced to be without rational basis, and an 

 adverse report was rendered by the Committee on Public Health and National Quaran- 

 tine in the United States Senate. 



The second statement I wish to make is that no remedy could be a sovereign 

 specific for three several diseases differing from one another so tremendously as 

 plague, cholera and Yellow Fever. It is manifestly a fact that so-called " cure-alls " 

 cure nothing. 



Finally, there are in this City several undoubted cases of Yellow Fever in the 

 practice of physicians of high repute, and one in the Emergency Hospital itself, in all 

 of which cases the patient had been subjecting himself to arsenization in accordance 

 with the Leach method. This statement can be easily substantiated whenever it 

 becomes necessary. 



Respectfully, 



J. H. White. 

 We, the Advisory Committee of the Orleans Parish Medical Society, concur in the 

 above opinion. 



