Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

To the Board of Health.

GENTLEMEN,

IT is not to be wondered that stragglers from the vessels lying at quarantine should escape to the city or the Jersey shore, when doctor Rush, and some other, physicians of Philadelphia, have had the effrontery to publish that the quarantine law is an useless burden on commerce, and ought to be repealed. One of these medical gentry has gone so far as to assert, that the people of London, Amsterdam, and other large trading cities of Europe, do not owe their preservation from the plague to their quarantine laws, but to their superior cleanliness.

The writer who is capable of publishing so daring a falsehood as this, in order to establish a favorite opinion, would not boggle at any thing: it is not want of charity to suppose that such a man would depopulate half the city of Philadelphia, by the yellow fever, if he could but establish the doctrine of its domestic origination. This he knows is impossible, while the quarantine law is strictly executed, and therefore he is perpetually endeavoring to sap its authority, as well as that of the Board of Health. But, be assured Gentlemen, it is the general belief of all your fellow-citizens, who heads have not been turned by a moon-struck physician, that the pestilence, called the yellow fever, is an imported disorder.

To you therefore they look, under Providence, for preservation from its desolating contagion: the law has clothed you with ample power; and they are ready to support you, at all risks, in the faithful discharge of your duty. If I am able to judge, from their conversation, they would think it a light matter, if nothing else will do, to hang a pilot, a captain, a sailor, or a physician, on the Wind-mill Island, in terrorem, rather than suffer the quarantine to be violated with impunity: and I am really apprehensive that nothing short of a severe example will be sufficient to guard the law or our lives against the united attacks of medical and commercial speculators.

It is reported, and some people are alarmed by the rumour, that a few cases of the fever have appeared, within a day or two, at a Sailor-house in Almond-street. You will doubtless think proper to enquire into the report, and, if you discover it to be well founded, order the patients to be instantly removed to the Hospital, and the house to be completely cleaned. A spark may be easily quenched. Should they recover under the humane and skilful treatment of the Institution, which is very probable; and they are persons who have violated the quarantine law, by coming clandestinely to the city, let them be punished with the utmost rigor of the law, as well as the keeper of the house who received them. Should a debauched Governor, or a stupid bench of Justices attempt to rescue them from your hands, publish the case to your fellow citizens--and if they will not support you, which I can hardly suppose, the case is without a remedy; and all you have to do is to give them up in toto, to the buffetings of Satan, or to the lancet of Doctor Sangrado.

A CITIZEN.