A memoir on contagion, more especially as it respects the yellow fever : read in convention of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, on the 3d of June, 1817 / by Nathaniel Potter, M.D.

  • Potter, Nathaniel, 1770-1843.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A memoir on contagion, more especially as it respects the yellow fever : read in convention of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, on the 3d of June, 1817 / by Nathaniel Potter, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    year, he proposed to introduce into his work that part of my letter, of the 28th of October, which described the symptoms and treatment of the epidemick in Caroline. I consented, provided he would also print the senti- ments therein expressed, as far as they regarded conta- gion. He declined this proposal, and (as may be seen in the first edition,) mentions only the use of purgatives in my practice. That part which questioned the con- tagion of the fever at Philadelphia, was the only part of the letter in which I felt an interest; and after some conversation with the doctor, he assigned as a reason for excluding that part of my communication, his firm belief that all diseases arising from marsh miasmata were contagious in a degree proportioned to their ma- lignity, and that the opposite doctrine was utterly untenable. Believing that I was, at that time, the only person in America who denied the contagion of the yellow fever, and that the opinion could be sus- tained by facts; in the summer of 1795, I proposed to select this question, and maintain the negative in an Inaugural Thesis, at the next commencement. I had scarcely began to arrange my notes, when I was waited on by Dr. Wistar, who entreated me to select some other subject. He assigned so many reasons, on the score of policy and expediency; his motives were so benevolent, and his views so pacifick and amiable, that I waved the subject. In June, 1797? I addressed a last long letter to Dr. Rush on the subject of contagion. In his answer he enumerated a host of authors in support of his opinions not one of whom employed the epithet contagious in any other sense than synonymous with atmospherical infec- tion. From the fever of 1793, at Philadelphia, to that