The South Western

"THE GERMAN."
The New Orleans Times gives a synopsis of a lecture on yellow fever, by Dr. Fenner at the school of medicine. The following extract will be found interesting:

Yellow fever had made its appearance among the medical profession about two hundred years ago. It was a remarkable fact that there was no account of the disease previous to the discovery of America. The disease eminently belonged to America. Though medical writers had traced it to Siam and the coast of Africa, there was opposition to this theory of its origin, since it was a disease not heard of before the first voyages of the discoverers. Extraordinary instances of its geographical history were known. It had appeared in Chester, Pa., and Winchester, Va., and localities never visited by malarious disease.

Norman, in his New Orleans book, had laid down its first commencement in the year 1765, but no proof could be reached to establish this statement. The lecturer had examined an old gentleman named Fernandez, an undertaker by profession, who was one of the oldest among the old inhabitants of New Orleans. Fernandez was able to tell him of many events that had happened in the city since his arrival, but could tell little regarding the first appearance of yellow fever. This was the more remarkable from the fact that Fernandez was an undertaker, and hence apt to give information as to the prevalence of disease of which his subjects died. To the best belief of Fernandez, yellow fever first made its appearance in the city in the year 1785, breaking out at Slaughter House Point, (now in Algiers.) He knew it, as he buried the bodies of those that died. The testimony of others similar to Fernandez, fixed the period of the first appearance in 1785-'90. But all details respecting this branch of the subject were dependent on tradition. The second epidemic appeared in New Orleans probably about 1796.

In the appearance in this region yellow fever was restricted to New Orleans, where it became epidemic every second year until 1817, when it seized hold of Mobile and Natchez. The disease had many vagaries in approach, many unaccountable phenomena in the locality of the attack. In 1841 it seized Rodney and Vicksburg, but strange enough omitted Grand Gulf, situated between these places. In 1853 the fever went up the Mississippi as far as Napoleon, Ark., passed up the Alabama to Montgomery, at the same time paying short visits to Jackson and Greenwood, in the State of Mississippi, and Richmond, in Texas. In 1855 it seized Memphis in a mild grasp. A few cases have appeared in St. Louis, but no epidemic. It is a false idea of the public that there has been no yellow fever here during the war. There have been cases every single year, but there has been no epidemic. All knowledge of the existence of yellow fever was suppressed for obvious reasons, but the testimony of physicians acquainted with its type establish the fact that there were cases here during the last four years. Since the yellow fever first made its appearance here there has been less of it since the war broke out than ever before. The value and importance of quarantine and local sanitary laws thus become manifest. He defined the theory of quarantine measures to be simply that of isolation of sanitary police as cleanliness. The object of quarantine was to cut off all communication, of sanitary police to render the localities capable of entertaining fever, healthy. The lecturer held to the theory that the fever was infectious but not always contagious.