XIV 
SANITARY AND MEDICAL CONDITIONS: PREVAILING 
DISEASES 
In general, the history of Liberia has been simple in respect to hygiene and sani- 
tation. Preventative measures have been few, and the survival of many of the 
Americo-Liberian people in Monrovia and the vicinity has often apparently 
depended in the main, on the tolerance or immunity which they have acquired 
in respect to infectious disease. The early history of the colony shows that a 
great amount of fever and sickness prevailed, and that the mortality was high. 
The first company of three Americans and eighty-eight freed negroes who sailed 
for the coast one after the other were attacked by sickness shortly after they 
landed, and all of the Americans and a large proportion of the negroes died. The 
following year the three American agents sent out to the colony, Andrews and 
Winn and his wife also succumbed to illness. It may also be remembered that 
in 1821, Gordon, a young midshipman who came to the aid of Ashmun at Mesur- 
ado, was attacked with fever, and he and eight of his men died within a month 
of the time of their landing. <A short time afterwards, Captain Spence of the 
U. 5S. 8. “Cyane,” who stayed at Mesurado for several weeks, lost his surgeon, 
Dr. Dashiell, and some of his men from disease. The extraordinary suscepti- 
bility of the new settlers to fever and to other tropical diseases is frequently 
referred to in the history of the colony. Of one hundred and five immigrants 
arriving on one vessel, all were attacked with fever within a month of landing. 
Mrs. Ashmun also died and Ashmun himself, after a severe attack of fever was 
sent home on the advice of a physician and died in 1828. 
The late Dr. Frederick C. Shattuck called my attention to several notes from 
Ashmun’s journal contained in the life of Ashmun written by Randolph Gurley.! 
These notes today seem of considerable significance. “Emigrants by ‘Doris’ 
were heavily afflicted; season unhealthy; their passage nearly twice the usual 
length. In the case of twenty-four from Maryland, the disease baffled all the 
medical skill existing in the colony.” “Emigrants by the ‘Randolph’ and ‘ Nauti- 
lus’ suffered slightly. Of the one hundred and seven by ‘Doris,’ twenty-four 
died, all from the North Potomac. Draw a line due east and west across the Elk 
Ridge, Maryland, and not a death has invaded the people from the south of it.” 
One can today only speculate whether the sickness and mortality among the 
settlers which Mr. Ashmun refers to was due to malaria or to yellow fever or to 
both. At that time the malarial parasite had not been discovered, and diagnosis 
was not accurate. However, the idea suggests itself that many of the persons 
coming from south of the Potomac had acquired — perhaps through previous 
1 Gurley: Life of Jehudi Ashmun (1835). 
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