Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/41

Rh the Ann Hall sent in one hundred and fifty-eight; while, as far back as the year 1802, one hundred and eighty-eight were taken from the Flora, two hundred and twenty from the Nancy, and two hundred and fifty-nine from the Penelope. In 1851, the number of deaths at sea between Liverpool and New York rose to the astounding number of 1,879, almost wholly the result of ship-fever.

"In addition to this, the poisonous influence which becomes infused into those who have escaped death or sickness on ship board lies dormant for a few days or weeks after debarkation, and sooner or later develops itself and brings many of them to the hospital, where from fifteen to twenty per cent, more are added to the list of dead. Thus there were treated in the Marine Hospital, on Staten Island, in 1852, 3,040 cases of ship-fever, of whom seventeen per cent. died. These were all emigrants; and we must add to these the cases of the same disease, of the same people, which were treated in the large hospitals at Flatbush, Ward's Island, and Bellevue, at the City Hospital, and at other places throughout this State and the States immediately adjoining, nearly all of whom arrived at the port of New York alone.

"In considering the hygienic aspect of emigration, we start, then, with the remarkable fact that, of those who embark upon an Atlantic voyage on any of a certain class of ships, out of every twelve one falls a victim; that is, nearly nine per cent, either never reach the promised land or die soon after.

"The general causes, as well as the means of prevention, of this disease are so plain as not to require a medical education for their comprehension, but may be made clear to ordinary intelligence; and the vast importance of the subject will justify an allusion to both in this essay.

"Ship-fever, as it is termed, from the place of its greatest prevalence, is the product of a miasma as distinct as that of marshes, which causes intermittent fever. This ship-miasma is itself as inevitable a result of certain conditions, as the other miasma is the product of marshes. And further, the means for its prevention are as clear and controllable in the one case as in the other. Thus, if an offensive marsh be thoroughly drained and dried, its peculiar miasma, and the disease which it causes, will disappear, and