203 



intercourse with the shore. Mr. Juliac had 

 heretofore treated the sick as was commonly 

 practised in Terra Firma, and in the islands, by 

 bleedings, aperient medicines, and acid drinks. 

 In this treatment no attempt was made to raise 

 the vital powers by the action of stimulants. In 

 attempting to calm the fever, the languor and 

 debility were augmented. In the hospitals, 

 where the sick were crowded, the mortality was 

 then thirty-three in a hundred among the 

 white Creoles ; and sixty-five in a hundred, 

 among the Europeans recently disembarked. 

 Since a stimulant treatment, the use of opium, 

 of benzoin, and of alcoholic draughts, has been 

 substituted for the ancient debilitating method^ 

 the mortality has considerably diminished. It 

 was believed to be reduced to twenty in a 

 hundred among Europeans, and ten among 

 Creoles * ; even when black vomitings, and 

 haemorrhages from the nose, ears, and gums, in- 



* I have treated in another work of the proportions of 

 mortality in the yellow fever. Nouv. Esp., vol. ii, p. 777 — 

 785, and 867. At Cadiz, the average mortality was, in 1800, 

 twenty in a hundred ; at Seville, in 1801, it amounted to 

 sixty in a hundred. At Vera-Cruz the mortality does not 

 exceed twelve or fifteen in a hundred, when the sick can 

 he properly attended. In the civil hospitals of Paris, the 

 number of deaths, one year with another, is from fourteen to 

 eighteen in a hundred ; but it is asserted, that a great 

 number of patients enter the hospitals almost dying, or at a 

 very advanced time of life. 



