Cholera in Jamaica / copy of a letter from C. Macaulay esq., Assistant Secretary to the Board of Health, to F. Peel esq., Under Secretary of State.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cholera in Jamaica / copy of a letter from C. Macaulay esq., Assistant Secretary to the Board of Health, to F. Peel esq., Under Secretary of State. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Towards the end of the month, the influence of the epidemic began to be felt at Port Maria. Numerous attacks of severe bowel complaint occurred, but none proved fatal till the 23d ; nor did the pestilence descend in force for another week. At the seaport of Orocabessa, to the westward, cases first began to appear about the same time. Its immediate neighbourhood had however been affected for at least a fortnight before. St. Anne. Towards the end of October two or three persons, upon their return from Spanish Town, had been attacked in the neighbourhood of the Moneague, in the moimtainous part of this parish. They recovered, and no one else suffered. It was around St. Anne's Bay that the epidemic influence was first experienced. A case of cholera occurred on the 3d or 4th near Richmond Estate, a few miles to leeward of the bay, and one in the bay itself on the 6th ; both in persons who had come from Kingston. Immediately after, or almost simultaneous with the latter case, diarrhoea became very prevalent in the town. There was the utmost alarm among the people from the first, from the dread of contagion more especially after death ; for such unfortunately had been the doctrine proclaimed in some of the public journals. No other fatal case took place until the 13th ; after which date the victims rapidly multiplied day after day throughout the rest of the month. It broke out at the very same time in different villages four or five miles apart from each other, and without any traceable intercommunication. In few towns were the ravages greater than in St. Anne's Bay. Crowds of people fled panic-stricken from the place ; and Dr. Bayley, the only resident practitioner, and two or three other gentlemen, were left for some days nearly alone to attend the sick and dying. Shops and stores were closed, and all business, except that of coffin-making and grave- digging, was suspended. No little difficulty was experienced in obtaining articles of food. The disease was of the most virulent type, often proving fatal in the course of a few hours. In numerous instances, Dr. Bayley remarked, the patients appeared to be struck from the very first with death ; they lay in a state of stupor, seeming scarcely to hear when bawled to, with little or no vomiting, purging, or cramps, and apparently with little suffering of an)'kind. When roused from their stupor, the only complaint they made was of pain in their right side. If the head was raised up, it rolled down unless supported, as if there was not strength to keep it up. The pulse was gone, and even the action of the heart was not to be felt. Exceedingly few who became col- lapsed recovered ; and no small proportion of the attacked rapidly fell into that state, not unfrequently from being cruelly neglected by their own families. Instead of administering the medicines which were provided, or using any means to restore the sick, they proceeded at once to dig a grave to be for the reception of the unhappy victim as soon as death seemed to take place. There is too much reason to believe that, in more instances than one, life was not extinct, when the body was dragged from where it lay to the hole which had been prepared, within a yard or two's distance from the door of the hut. The situation and condition of the town of St. Anne's Bay amply account for the fatal malignancy of the pestilence there. The ground on which it stands slopes up from the beach to high land in the rear, and is overrun with neglected vegetation. Immediately to windward there are marshy spots, the miasm from which cannot but affect the town ; but by far the worst feature is the existence of a morass in the very middle of it, between the main street and the sea-shore. This swamp, overgrown with wild sugar cane and other paludal weeds, is tra- versed by two or three paths ; a good many dwellings, generally of the worst description, have been put down in this pestiferous locality. In wet weather the water stands a foot or two in depth. It was impossible not to be struck with the peculiarly unhealthy aspect of the people; even the pigs seemed to me to be more unthriven and diseased than elsewhere. The ravages of the cholera here were of course frightful. The other locality, which suffered most, was along the deep wet gully or ravine on the east side of the town. Very many of the cholera sicca cases occurred there near the river side. Dr. Bayley had foreseen that this would be one of the worst haunts of the pestilence, and he had accordingly urged many of the people to abandon the place. Every hut has a pigstye, and often a foul privy to boot, close to and often right to windward of it.