Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

For the Gazette of the United States.

Mr. Fenno,

I beg leave through the channel of your paper to enquire of the Physician who reported to the inspectors of health last Friday, that "the yellow fever had again made its appearance in this city, but that it was not at present contagious;" what would have induced him to make such a report? No benefit can arise to the public from a knowledge of such a fact, admitting it to be as stated, but a great deal of damage: because such reports cannot fail of alarming and filling with dread, the minds of those who are not possessed of the Doctor's fine discernment and capacity of splitting diseases into grades, sub-grades and sub-sub-grades; therefore such a report will not only render multitudes uneasy and interrupt the usual course of business, but injure the interest and reputation of the city in several other respects.

If the disease really existed, it would be commendable to sound the alarm--it would be criminal to be silent; but if it is not in the city, or if being in the city it is not contagious, it is the height of cruelty to create useless terror and alarm in the minds of the citizens.

But Mr. Fenno, is it not very extraordinary, if the disease is in the city, and the Physician alluded to has had 26 cases of it since June, that it has appeared to none of the other Physicians, not even to those who attend the Dispensary, which I am assured from the best authority is the case?

A Physician who has great weight with the credulous and ignorant, has already attempted to ruin the reputation of this flourishing and delightful city, by publishing an opinion that the late pestilential fever was generated in it; and that its situation and climate is favorable to the generation of the most malignant maladies. If such an opinion was not believed by every man who knows the character of that Physician to be a mere invention to support a mistaken theory, or that it proceeded from a rage for being esteemed the most learned man in the Universe; the author would in a few years have the divine satisfaction of seeing this populous and prosperous city deserted by all its opulent inhabitants, and become a solitary waste where he might sit alone "smiling ghastly o'er its ruins and enjoying the fruits of his singular opinion."

If the opinion of that physician was founded in fact, Mr. Fenno, such would be the bloody consequence; for who that has any regard for health or life, would venture to remain in a city notorious for generating plagues which put life in perpetual jeopardy?

This however, fortunately is not credited, and the city, in spite of the reveries of Philosophers, Physicians, and Conjurers, will flourish for ages yet to come; and when all the sources of stagnant water in its suburbs come to be removed or corrected, it will be one of the most healthy situations in America. Open on every side to the access of the winds--with a dry soil--streets favorably arranged--the inhabitants, industrious, cleanly, and well informed--it cannot in the nature of things be unhealthy. Compare its bills of mortality with those of Paris, London, Edinburgh, Vienna, or Stockholm, and you will at once be convinced how much more healthful it is than either of those.

Be under no concern my fellow-citizens, the Yellow Fever is not in our city, nor is it possible for it to be generated in it, in its present situation.

WALTER QUERIST.