234 HOSACK ON THE LAWS OF CONTAGION. 



But there is another circumstance which particularly merits atten- 

 tion : in every epidemic visitation of the yellow fever, several days, 

 viz. from eight to twelve, or fourteen, have generally elapsed between 

 the first cases that appeared, and the communication of it to other per- 

 sons, even in the same neighbourhood; insomuch that not only our 

 citizens, but our physicians themselves, have been led to doubt the exist- 

 ence of the disease, and to stigmatize as alarmists those who first 

 announced the deadly visiter.* I can never forget the occasion, in 

 1795, when that venerable and experienced physician, the late Dr. John 

 Bard, assembled the physicians of this city to announce to them the 

 first cases of this disease which he had observed in the family of hk 

 friend, Mr. Jenkins. The physicians met, but declared they had seen 

 no other fevers than what they had been accustomed to observe every 

 year, and even doubted, on that occasion, the correctness of Dr. Bard's 

 observations, relative to the nature and character of the disease to which 

 he called their attention: but that accurate observer had been too 

 familiarly conversant with the yellow fever as it appeared in New- 

 York in 1743 and 1762, and too well knew the pathognomonic symptoms 

 of that disease to confound it with the fevers of our own climate: he, 

 accordingly, in the most emphatic language, replied to their doubts, 

 " Gentlemen, within a fortnight you will all see and acknowledge the 

 West-India yellow fever to exist in our city." The event is well 

 known.f The same interval between the first cases of the disease and 

 its subsequent diffusion in the neighbourhood where it first made its 

 appearance is noticed by almost every writer who has recorded the 

 yellow fever in the United States. 



* See Note K. f See Bayley and Hardie on the Epidemic of 1795. — See aleo Carrie 



on the Fever of 1799. 



