The Sun.
London, England, 1853-09-03 00:00:00

THE YELLOW FEVER.

The General Board of Health, in their Second Report
on Quarantine, state that, from a consideration of the
whole of the evidence before them respecting yellow
fever, they arrived at the following conclusions :-
1. That yellow fever epidemics break out simul-
taneously in different and distant towns, and in different
and distant parts of the same town, often under circum-
stances in which communication with infected persons is
impossible.

2. That yellow fever epidemics are usually preceded
by the occurrence of individual or sporadic cases of the
disease, which sporadic cases are likewise common in
seasons when no epidemic prevails.
3. That yellow fever epidemics, though occasionally
extending over large tracts of country, are more fre-
quently limited as to the space over which they spread,
often not involving the whole of a town, and sometimes
not even any considerable district of it.
....

4. That yellow fever epidemics do not spread from
district to district by any rule of gradual progression,
but often ravage certain localities, while they spare en-
tirely, or visit very lightly, others in the immediate
neighbourhood, with which the inhabitants are in con-
stant intercommunication.

5. That yellocifeveT;Pidemics, when they invade a
district, do not spread from the houses first infected to
the next, and thence to the adjoining, and thus extend
as from a centre ; but, on the contrary, are often strictly
confined to particular houses in a street, to particular
houses on one side of a street, to particular rooms i❑ the
same house, and often even to particular rooms on the
same story.

6. That in general, when yellow fever breaks out in a
family, only one or two individuals are attacked ; com-
monly the attendants on the sick escape; and when seve-
ral members of a family are successively attacked, or the
attendants on the sick suffer, either the epidemic was
general in the locality, or the individuals attacked had
gone into an infected district.

7. That when yellow fever is prevalent in a locality,
the most rigid seclusion in that locality affords no pro-
tection from the disease.

8. That, on the other hand, so great is the success at-
tending the removal from an infected locality, and the
dispersion of the sick in a healthy district, that by this
measure alone the further progress of an epidemic is
often arrested at once.

9. That such dispersion of the sick is followed by no
transmission of the disease, not even when the sick are
placed in the wards of a hospital among patients labour-
ing under other maladies.

10. That no one of the preceeding facts can be recon-
ciled with any other conclusion than that, whatever
may be the exciting cause of yellow fever, it is local or
endemic in its origin, and the evidence of this conclu-
sion is therefore cumulative.
11. That the conditions which influence the localiza-
tion of yellow fever are known, definite, and, to a great
extent, removable ; and are substantially the same as
the localizing causes of cholera and of all other epidemic
diseases.
in
12. That, as in the case of all other epidemic diseases,
pro.orti
d• • r nn as these localizing causes are removed or
ni.:101;:t
tadnsy?llow fever ceases to appear, or recurs at
13. That
bizet,rvals and in milder forms.
causes, thereills?"
paramount i
that is, the state ot act:), namely'
the common external localizing
mpontteazonstitutional predisposing cause of
a cold climate ; in other system produced by residence in
non-acclimatization
to the action of tropica )Navords European blood exposed
that the utmost care shou
ld be taken -to prevent indi-
elat ; the practical lesson being
recently arriived within the
the disease actually exists or a *district in which
ghaantr°e
14. That there is no evidence
fever has ever been imported.
15. That consequently the means
when such Tloefrnith:
yellow fever are not quarantine restrictions
t try cordona, but sanitary works and ()Iterations, having
.porary '
for their object the removal and pr evention
severalt
works localizing
a re
impracticable,
pc
roanedtiiteiao
hn
Ise, , andthe
tete
nenremoval,
as far as may be possible, of the population from the
infected localities.

FLOGGING IN THE ARMlC.—Yesterclay a return to
the House of Commons was printed on. corporal punish-
ments in the army for the last five rears. Last year
the number of corps in which no punishments had taken
place was 101. Punishments had occurred in 31 corps,
and the number of men punished was 45. The general
number lashes inflicted 50. In a few instances only 25,
and in one case, for insubordinaticin, 75 out of 100
ordered were given. The offences were chiefly " dis-
graceful conduct." Only two cases of drunkenness in
the year.