Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/45

Rh and not expected to live twenty-four hours. The day after landing there was a heavy rain, and, the shanties affording no protection with their 'sail' roofs, the sick were found the next morning wet, and their bedding, such as it was, drenched with the rain. It was replaced with such articles as could be collected from the charity of the inhabitants. Their number was in creased by new patients to eighty-two in all. On board the ship, which was cleansed after landing the passengers, four of the crew were taken with ship-fever, and two of them died. Some of the nurses at the encampment were taken sick, but recovered. Of the whole number of eighty-two passengers removed from the ship, not one died. Pure air, good water, and, perhaps, the rain (though only the first thirty-six were affected by it) seemed to have effected the cure.

"The ship was the Phoebe, with between three and four hundred passengers, a number of whom (twenty-seven) had died on the passage. The shanties spoken of were two in number, thirty feet long, twenty feet wide, boarded on three sides four feet up, with old sails stretched over them. The twelve who were removed from the ship in a state of insensibility were apparently in so hopeless a condition that the overseer, who was a carpenter, observed, 'Well, Doctor, I think I shall have some boxes to make before many hours.' The night after their arrival at the encampment,' says Dr. Smith, 'we had a violent thunder-gust, accompanied by torrents of rain. On visiting them the following morning, the clothes of all were saturated with water; in other words, they had had a thorough ablution; this, doubtless, was a most fortunate circumstance. The medical treatment was exceedingly simple, consisting, in the main, of an occasional laxative or enema, vegetable acids, and bitters; wine was liberally administered, together with the free use of cold water, buttermilk, and animal broths. The four sailors who sickened after the arrival of the vessel were removed to the room of an ordinary dwelling-house. The medical treatment in their case was precisely similar, yet two of them died, and the others suffered from carbuncles while convalescing. The doctor adds, 'My opinion is, that had the eighty-two treated at the encampment been placed in a common hospital, many of them would also have fallen