The Daily Crescent

From the New Orleans Medical Review for March.

Health of the City.

Since our last issue but little has transpired in the medical world to interest either our city or country readers. The winter thus far has been unusually mild, and the changes have been so gradual as to induce but little serious disease. As usual during the winter season, our city has been visited by sporadic cases of Scarlatina; in some instances it proved fatal in a few hours after the attack; again, it was so mild as to attract but little attention, and required scarcely any medication. Nevertheless, in certain localities it proved to be quite unmanageable, and at one period excited considerable alarm among the timid.

Recently the disease seems in the decline, and now we hear but little said on the subject. A few cases of variola have been reported from time to time during the winter, and we learn that the cases are increasing in different parts of the city. Vaccination, that invaluable discovery, has, however robbed this disease of more than half its terrors. This preventive is too much neglected by the poor, and we think it the duty of the city authorities to look to this matter—to compel the careless and ignorant to submit to vaccination, and thus limit the extension of this loathsome disease.

Another disease has been introduced into our city during the fall and winter, which has excited considerable apprehension in the public mind—we allude to the Ship, Typhoid or Typhus Fever, (we give the reader choice of names,) which develops itself among the Irish immigrants during their voyage across the Atlantic. Several British ships have recently arrived in the Mississippi River with hundreds of poor immigrants on board in a deplorable condition. Those who escaped (and there were few) the Ship Fever, suffered for want of proper food and good water, and when they reached our Levee they were much reduced and many of them utterly prostrated.

This disease—Ship Fever—is produced by crowding two or three hundred steerage passengers into a small space, where filth and debris of every kind—where the exhalations from these half-starved creatures are allowed to accumulate, thus creating a focus of infection, from which the poison extends to all who breathe an atmosphere thus contaminated; hence, the disease often assails even the cabin passengers, as we recently witnessed, although less crowded, better nourished and better provided with all the comforts and conveniences for a sea-voyage.

We regard want of personal cleanliness, together with a short allowance of provisions, and of bad quality, two conditions highly favorable for the generation of this disease. Hence removal into a pure atmosphere, cold ablutions, fresh provisions, and but little medication will suffice to restore the great majority of these cases to health.

So great has been the influx of immigrants this winter afflicted with Ship Fever, that the Charity Hospital now contains over 1000 sick, about 800 of whom are afflicted with Ship or Typhoid Fever. In some instances the disease has been communicated to the nurses, students, physicians and other attendants; this has not been of very frequent occurrence, and it seems to affect those only who are rather predisposed to low forms of fever, and who are long and frequently exposed to the exciting causes of the disease.

The crowded state of the Hospital, and the consequent deplorable condition of its inmates, have at length aroused the attention of both the Legislature, now in session, and the City authorities. By the former body, a Committee was recently appointed to examine into and report upon the condition of the sick at the Hospital. The report was made to that body, in which it was advised to establish a branch of the Hospital in the suburbs of the city, where the sick immigrant, in reaching our shores, should be received and treated.

Acting upon this suggestion, Mayor Crossman recommended the Councils of the three Municipalities, and the Board of Health, to appoint Committees, who should confer together upon the subject, and devise some measures for the disposal and accommodation, out of the limits of the city, of those arriving here afflicted with Ship Fever or other infectious diseases. The result of this conference is not yet known.

We think the remedy for all these evils very simple. Let the City authorities lease or construct cheap and commodious buildings in the lower part of the Third Municipality, nearly opposite Slaughter-house Point; compel all vessels with sick immigrants on board to anchor off this Point, transport the sick to this temporary Hospital, and detain the vessel until she shall be cleansed, fumigated with some disinfectant, and otherwise purified to the satisfaction of the boarding officer. This building could at the same time receive many from the Charity Hospital, and thus diminish materially the crowded state of that great institution. Charity to those already in the Hospital, as well as to those who may be doomed to apply there for relief, demands of the proper authorities some such plan to ameliorate this condition. The mode already suggested will be an important step in this matter—and if this or something similar is adopted, no fear need be entertained that the Ship Fever will spread through the city and become an epidemic. Remove these foci of infection, created by crowding a large number of sick together, beyond the thoroughfares of the city, and our citizens will remain exempt from fever.

The disease, as found in our Hospitals, is not malignant or unmanageable: in many cases cleanliness, pure air, an appropriate diet, with general attention to the hygienic condition of the patients are all that is required to establish convalescence.

Since the memorable epidemic of 1847, our city authorities and citizens generally, with a fractional part of the profession, have advocated the necessity of adopting quarantine regulations for the city of New Orleans. With this view, several bills have been presented to the Legislature, asking for authority to enforce quarantine.

We can only say that these propositions have already received the courteous attention of our representatives, and we doubt not that many will advocate and vote for the measure.

Aware of the wishes of our citizens, and anxious to do every thing to promote public health, a Committee from the Board of Health recently petitioned the Legislature to grant power to that body to establish quarantine regulations, whenever such should be deemed necessary for the public security by the Board. What will be the final action of our Legislature on this important subject it is impossible to predict.

Although somewhat skeptical in this subject, yet we are willing to have the quarantine system enforced until experience shall decide for or against it. It will have more than one good effect, viz: it will inspire the public mind with confidence in the sanitary condition of the city, encourage families to remain here the greater part of the year, deter captains of ships from bringing vessels into our ports infected with disease and loaded with pestilence and death—these are a few of the beneficial effects that will flow from a proper and rigidly enforced quarantine.