Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/40

26 ship-fever, as it is called when it takes place at sea, cholera, and small-pox. "Of these three"—says John H. Griscom, M.D., and former Superintendent of the Commissioners of Emigration of New York, in a communication addressed on January 14, 1854, to a special committee of the United States Senate—"that to which the emigrant is most prone is ship-fever. The extraordinary prevalence of this disease at the present time, and for the past half-century, but especially for the past seven or eight years, is an astounding phenomenon, particularly when it is remembered that we live in the midst of all the light necessary for its prevention.

"My first practical cognizance of the horrible condition in which emigrants are frequently found on shipboard was in 1847, when, as a member of a committee of the New York Academy of Medicine, I visited the Quarantine establishment to enquire into the medical history of the typhus fever then extensively prevailing, and crowding that institution with patients. On that occasion we visited the ship Ceylon, from Liverpool, which had come to anchor a few hours before, with a large cargo of passengers. A considerable number had died upon the voyage, and one hundred and fifteen were then ill with the fever, and were preparing for a removal to the hospital. Before any had yet left the ship, we passed through the steerage, making a more or less minute examination of the place and its occupants; but the indescribable filth, the emaciated, half-nude figures, many with the petechial eruption disfiguring their faces, crouching in the bunks, or strewed over the decks, and cumbering the gangways; broken utensils and débris of food spread recklessly about, presented a picture of which neither pen nor pencil can convey a full idea. Some were just rising from their berths for the first time since leaving Liverpool, having been suffered to lie there all the voyage, wallowing in their own filth. It was no wonder to us that, with such total neglect of sanitary supervision, and an entire absence of ventilation, so many of such wretched beings had perished or were then ill of fever; it was only surprising that so many had escaped.

"Shocking as this case was, it has been frequently surpassed, at least as far as figures are concerned. In 1842, the ship Eutaw gave one hundred and twenty to the hospital on arrival; in 1837,