ON THE 
COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE 
OP 
VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL 
AS A 
CAUSE OF FEVER. 
BY USHER PARSONS, M. D. 
rnopESSOtt of anatomy and surgery, i-rovidence, it. i. 
EXTRACTED FROM THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THE MEDICAL SCIENCES, 
FOR NOVEMBER, 1831. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
PRINTED BY JOSEPH R. A. SKERRETT. 
1830. ON THE 
COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE 
OF 
VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL 
®ii©®ia2p©iu2S3©sr 
AS A 
CAUSE OF FEVER. 
BY USttER PARSONS, M. D. 
PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND SURGERY, rROYIDENCE, B. X. 
Extracted from the American Journal ofjfie Medical Sciences, for November, 1830. 
. n*'•>ft 
PHILADELPHIA: 
PRINTED BY JOSEPH R. A. SKERRETT. 
4830. ON THE 
COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE 
OF 
VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL DECOMPOSITION 
AS A CAUSE OF FEVER. 
IT is supposed, that one-sixth of the human species die of fever. 
As a majority of cases have seemed attributable to natural causes, 
unremitted attention has been given to their investigation. But notr 
withstanding the importance of the subject, and the weight of talent 
that has been employed, it involves important questions, that still 
remain undecided; among the most important of which, are those 
we have selected as the subject of the present communication. 
In discussing these questions, our attention will be directed first, 
to the effect of vegetable decomposition; secondly, to that of animal 
decomposition; thirdly, to the comparative influence of both as a 
cause of fever. 
I. The effect of vegetable decomposition on the human body.— 
The depopulation of particular regions—the destruction of armies 
quartered therein—and the greater prevalency of fevers at cer- 
tain seasons, than at others, gave rise to a particular examination of 
the soil, face of the country, and atmosphere, peculiar to those 
places. It was soon ascertained that fevers prevailed most in 
marshy, moist ground, wherein vegetables having grown, die and 
putrefy. This led to the belief, at an early period, of their being 
caused by putrefaction, and this belief has become so generally and 
firmly established, that a statement of it at the present day wears 
the air of a truism. It may, however, not be amiss, on the present 
occasion, to re-examine the evidence on which such belief has been 
maintained. 
1st. Is fever proportioned in frequency and intensity, to the 
amount and rapidity of vegetable decomposition? The rapidity of 
this process is regulated by the degree of heat and moisture. Either 
of these agents, without the other, fails of producing it. If moisture 
be increased till it excludes air from the surface of vegetable matter, 
decomposition is suspended, and the same effect is produced, if heat 4 
be increased till moisture is dissipated; as also when the surround- 
ing atmosphere is reduced to the freezing point. But when the 
temperature of this ascends from 32° Fahrenheit, the proper quantity 
of moisture being present, decomposition increases in direct ratio 
with it, till the degree of heat rises to 100°. Let us now inquire 
whether the frequency and intensity of fever prevails in countries 
where decomposing vegetables abound in proportion to the degree of 
heat and moisture. 
In respect to heat, we may observe that the ancients discovered at 
an early period, that its prevalence coincided with that of fever. To 
this agency alone, they attributed the malignant fevers that wasted 
their armies, and depopulated many regions. They observed too, 
that frost arrests, or mitigates all fevers, which they had ascribed to 
the influence of this cause;—that it stayed the progress of inter- 
mittent, bilious, remittent, and yellow fevers;—that such fevers 
were unknown in the winter season of temperate climates, and that 
they commenced only in the summer, and declined in autumn. 
Later writers have observed, that within the tropics, no season is 
exempted from the occasional appearance of these fevers, and that 
in some parts, they prevail through the year;—that winds from the 
north even in summer, render them milder in all places; that even 
the shade of trees moderates their violence, while this, on the other 
hand is greatly augmented, when the trees are cut away, and the 
surface of the ground left exposed to the direct influence of the sun. 
Hence, the first settlers of a wilderness suffer less from fever, than 
those do who arrive immediately after forests are cleared, and before 
decaying substances are removed from the ground by cultivation. 
The severity and duration too, as well as the frequency of fever, is 
influenced by the degree of heat. This is observable both in respect 
to different seasons, and to different latitudes, and also to different 
altitudes of the same place. In some latitudes, vernal intermittents 
are succeeded as the season advances, by bilious remittents, corres- 
ponding in severity to the elevation of temperature; and when 
this is very high, and long-continued, they assume the malignant 
type. In the autumn again, they become milder, and are finally 
checked on the accession of frost. In respect to their duration, we 
find that in England, and in corresponding latitudes on the continent, 
fevers appear in August, and prevail through September, declining 
as the cold weather approaches. In the Netherlands, they appear 
in the latter end of July:—in the campagna of Italy, and in Spain, 
early in July: in Sardinia and Minorca in June, and are prolonged 
till late in November; in Egypt in May, and they prevail both earlier 
and later in Gambia nearer the equator. 5 
The same remarks apply to this country, making allowance in 
comparisons with Europe, for difference of temperatures in corres- 
ponding latitudes. The fevers we have mentioned are hardly known 
in Quebec; are rare and mild in New England, excepting in extreme- 
ly hot seasons, when they produce yellow fever: its exemption from 
intermittents and remittents being ascribable to other causes than an 
appropriate degree of heat, and which will be noticed hereafter. Pass- 
ing southward we find the frequency and severity of fevers increas- 
ing in Maryland and Virginia, still more in South Carolina and 
Georgia, and appearing earlier and later till we reach New Orleans, 
w'here fever of a malignant character prevails during a great part of 
every summer. 
In respect to difference of altitude, heat, in conjunction with other 
causes to be noticed, acts with more effect on the low grounds of tro- 
pical climates, than on elevated situations, where the temperature is 
cooler. Monks-hill in Augusta, says Dr. Ferguson, is quite exempt 
from yellow fever at the height of six hundred feet. On the Ridge, 
a sloping hill in India, three hundred feet above the marshes, the yel- 
low fever of the marshes disappears, and the common remittent takes 
its place, while at the top of the Ridge, five hundred feet high, the 
troops are exempt from disease.* 
The same remark applies to the fevers of Cuba. “Tivoli, less un- 
healthy by far than Rome, is three hundred feet above Rome. Sezza, 
exempt from diseases, is nine hundred feet above the Pontine 
marshes. ”t It appears then, that in proportion to the degree and du- 
ration of heat, other causes concurring, is the severity and duration 
of fevers, until the temperature rises to 100°. “ Putrefaction takes 
place most readily,” says Fordyce, “in a heat of 100° of Fahren- 
heit’s thermometer. It goes on much more slowly in a heat of 110°; 
it goes on more slowly in less degrees of heat than 100; and scarcely 
at all at 40°. ” 
In respect to moisture, it maybe observed, that when this is want- 
ing fever rarely occurs; and when it is entirely dissipated, fevers that 
have prevailed disappear. It has a most important influence in mo- 
difying the influence of heat. In some dry situations, the hottest 
seasons are the healthiest. Lind states, that the hottest season of 
Senegal is the driest, and at the same time the healthiest. The in- 
habitants near the hot deserts of Africa, are invariably free from epi- 
demic fevers. “ In the hot countries within the tropics, in general, 
the hot and dry season is healthy.” Lind, speaking of Guinea, says, 
this, as most tropical countries, has, properly speaking, only two 
* American Quarterly Review, Vol. IV. p. 296. 
f Ibid. 6 
seasons, the wet and the dry. The former is of about four months 
continuance, and is the season of sickness; whereas, for many months 
in the dry season, most parts of this country are equally healthy and 
pleasant with any in the world. No sooner, however, do the rains 
set in, than the ravages of disease commence, and continue through- 
out the wet season, and afterwards, till the attendant moisture is 
evaporated. As soon as this is effected, the health of the country is 
restored, except in those places which continue wet throughout the 
year. The same thing occurs in this country. Wet seasons, if hot, 
being generally more sickly than dry ones. The wet seasons of 1804, 
1821, and 1823, were very sickly, and the dry one of 1822 was com- 
paratively quite healthy. If there be exceptions, if dry seasons pro- 
duce local epidemics, they are uniformly in marshy places, or in ar- 
tificial ponds, where evaporation exposes decaying vegetables that 
were previously inundated. Hence it is that there are some, who, 
even in the present advanced age of medical science, believe that 
moisture alone will produce intermittent, I’emittent, or bilious fever. 
But let such inquire of those who sail on the great lakes of this 
country, particularly Erie, and they will find that vessels anchoring 
in the months of July and August on those parts of its shores that 
are marshy, have their crews affected either with intermittent or re- 
mittent fever, according to the advancement of the season, and that 
new cases cease immediately to appear, on sailing from such anchor- 
age to the central part of the lake, or to a port having a bold shore, 
or which is destitute of decaying vegetables. In sailing from this 
lake during midsummer to lake Michigan, crews are apt to suffer 
more or less with fever from passing through the river St. Clair, es- 
pecially if detained by head winds, and the inhabitants of both its 
shores have suffered from fever and ague more than almost any other 
section of country, yet, on entering Lake Huron, new cases of fever 
in such crews immediately cease to appear. 
From the sick records of the surgeon of the United States’ squa- 
dron on Lake Erie, I have found that the ships anchored at Put-in- 
bay, with healthy crews, in the month of August, 1813, that while 
there, and at Sandusky Bay, a few miles from it, which was still 
more marshy, there occurred in the space of three weeks more than 
one hundred cases of bilious remittent fever, and forty of them in the 
flag-ship, her crew consisting of one hundred and thirty men—that 
on sailing in this time upon a short cruize across the lake to Malden, 
the fever was entirely stayed, but that new cases began to appear 
immediately on returning to their former anchorage, and that after 
the 10th of September, the day they sailed some ten or twelve miles 
to mnet the enemy, no new cases occurred. In these lakes there is no salt to correct the febrific quality of the moisture in ships, and 
yet they are healthy when in the centre of the lake, whilst persons 
have, within my knowledge, caught intermittents and remittents by 
passing in a steam-boat in a clear night through the marshes between 
New York and New Brunswick, although the water all the way is 
salt. 
But, while we deny that moisture is the sole cause of such fevers, 
we repeat that it is necessary for the progress of putrefaction, and 
consequently for the generation of fever. If there are apparent ex- 
ceptions, if some places that appear arid are nevertheless sickly, it 
will be found that they are remarkable for having dews at night 
which act like rain on decomposing vegetables. 
“ This accounts for the fevers produced in the arid tracts near Lisbon, men- 
tioned by Dr. Ferguson, remarkable for their dryness. Moisture may also flow 
below the surface when this appears parched. On many of the water-courses 
which run between the ridges of the hills in Sicily, the streams often disappear 
below the gravel, and pass to the sea, near which, water is found about a foot 
below ground. These hidden streams produce decomposition of vegetables 
and also fevers.”* 
But if, on the one hand, a total dissipation of moisture will arrest 
the progress of vegetable decomposition, and at the same time of 
fevers, so on the other hand the same effects will be produced by its 
superabundance. Thus, a bilious fever was arrested in Brabant, by 
inundating a marsh in its neighbourhood, and Sir John Pringle re- 
lates, that the inhabitants of Breda adopted the same expedient 
with success. The marshes of Delaware are innoxious in seasons when 
they are completely overflowed. “ The same is said by Dazille, 
of the marshes of Cayenne.” Excessive rains have produced the 
same effect in many places in this country. In short, whenever 
moisture is sufficient to exclude air, the process of decomposition as 
before stated, is suspended, and with it also the prevailing fevers 
we have mentioned. It is only then, where heat and moisture are 
duly proportioned, that fevers are produced, and these will be severe 
in proportion to the combined activity of these agents, a sufficient 
quantity of dead vegetables being present for them to act upon. 
J1 sufficient quantity of vegetables we repeat, for this is as impor- 
tant to the morbific result, as the agency of heat and moisture. 
• The same thing was observed in Dutch Brabant by Sir John Pringle. 
Where the soil is light, and penetrated by water every where beneath the sur- 
face, and in summer loads the air with vapour, even where no water is visible. 
The people are more or less subject to intermittent fevers, in proportion to the 
comparative distance of the water from the surface, so that by looking into the 
wells, one may form a judgment of the healthfulness of the several villages.— 
Observations on Diseases of the Army, p. 2. 8 
Whenever this is most abundant, heat and moisture acting in due 
proportions, there fevers will be most prevalent, their intensity or 
malignancy increasing according as the heat approaches the degree 
of 100° of Fahrenheit. Salt marshes have been supposed to form an 
exception, but this is a mistake. “ They produce fever in Norman- 
dy, and on the French shores of the Mediterranean, in Spain, anil 
throughout the south of Europe.” In Holland, the severest seasons 
of fever have succeeded irruptions of the sea. The same thing is 
observable on our own sea-coast, and several writers have observed, 
that putrefaction is more rapid whenever salt and fresh water inter- 
mix upon vegetables, and that salt marshes situated at the confluence 
of fresh and salt water, are more pernicious to health, than marshes 
surrounded by fresh water—and the effluvia exhaling from them in 
hot weather, every one must acknowledge, is more offensive. 
In tropical countries, sickness prevails most in low and marshy 
plains, as Benin, New and Old Calabar.* 
“ All those cities and stations in Africa, Asia, and America, which have been 
the grave of unnumbered thousands, are situated at the mouths, or on the 
banks of rivers, in flat countries, which in the rainy season, become one vast 
morass.”f 
In more temperate climates, similar spots are the seat of endemic 
fevers of a milder character. The artificial morasses, produced by 
building mill-dams, are the spots noted for disease—of this, every 
neighbourhood affords instances. J Where vegetation is rank, and 
forms a thicket of grass and reeds, and these become moistened and 
matted together, they form what is termed a jungle. This kind of 
materials is so fruitful a source of fever, that in many places it has 
given rise to the name of jungle fever. The swamps and shores of 
lakes, ponds, and rivers, when first cleared, present to the sun great 
quantities of underwood and jungle, which had before been excluded 
by dense foliage. “ The dreadful fever, affecting the first settlers 
of the Gennesee country, from 1796 to 1800, arose from their clear- 
ing and settling the rich bottom land. Ӥ Doubtless, much of the 
salutary influence of the foliage of trees is ascribable to the changes 
produced upon the air by vegetable respiration. The ancients held 
their groves to be screens to their health, and “ the unhealthiness of 
the Porta del Populo at Rome, arose from cutting down a wood that 
served as a screen to that part of the city.” When cultivation of 
the soil has taken place for some time in the new countries, and ve- 
getable matter is decomposed on the ground, and dried by ditching 
* Lind. 
| Ibid. 
§ Amer. Quar. Rev. 
t Cooke, Med. Record. Vol. VII. p. 451. 9 
and draining, the inhabitants suffer less from fever—hence inter- 
mittents which, in their early settlement prevailed extensively in the 
western parts of Massachusetts and in Connecticut, on the rich bot- 
tom lands and intervales, have quite disappeared. But it is unne- 
cessary to dwell longer on the well-known febrific tendency of 
marshes, and other moist places covered with dead vegetables in hot 
seasons. It is known not only to the profession, but even to the 
vulgar, and to the less enlightened nations—to the lower orders of 
Europe, to the negroes of Africa—and it is familiar to all the yeo- 
manry of this country. Scarce an individual can be found in the 
profession, who doubts that intermittent, remittent, and yellow 
fevers, are proportioned in frequency and intensity to the amount and 
rapidity of vegetable decomposition. 
This is, however, to be understood as referring to vegetables that 
are similar in kind. Different vegetables vary in their morbific ef- 
fects, while undergoing decomposition. It is not produced at all by 
dead peaty bogs, or by peat which carries on no vegetation.* Blades 
of grass are less baneful than more succulent plants, as cabbage and 
the bulbous roots, potatoes, turnips, &c. Large wood decays more 
slowly in successive concentric layers, and generates miasm slowly 
in proportion to its bulk, but “ the poisonous effects of putrefying 
flax, hemp, indigo, and coffee, are well known in the storehouses on 
the wharves of New York and Philadelphia.” Perhaps this more 
deadly character may be owing to confinement and concentration, 
and to the fact that a sort of fermentative heat is generated in the 
centre of the mass. 
If required to specify instances in this country, wherein fever pro- 
ceeded from vegetable decomposition, we might name a great num- 
ber that are recorded in the early medical journals of New York and 
Philadelphia. The Medical Repository was commenced early after the 
prevalence of yellow fever in Philadelphia, and other seaports, and 
received the reports of physicians respecting it, from every quarter. 
The five first volumes contain a large number of instances, where 
yellow and malignant fever was decidedly and unequivocally refer- 
able to vegetable decomposition. In some instances, fever was traced 
to damaged coffee, in others, to vegetable filth in docks, in others, 
* “ In the campagna of Rome, it is remarked, that if the labourers cut down 
certain plants, (a bushy thistle chiefly, of which the botanical character has es- 
caped me,) a fever that otherwise would not have occurred, is the conse- 
quence. The malaria seems, or is thought to be entangled within it, and to 
be let loose by this disturbance.”—Macculloch. 10 
to marshy ground, and some sporadic cases occurred in houses whose 
cellars contained rotten cabbages, potatoes, and turaips. The prize 
dissertation of Dr. Cooke, in the Medical Recorder for 1824, fur- 
nishes more histories than any other publication, of the remittent and 
intermittent kind of epidemic fevers in the middle and southern states, 
ascribable to no other cause than the foregoing. 
“ And indeed so intimate and obvious is the connexion between such cause 
and effect in a vast majority of cases, that wherever fevers of the last mention- 
ed character appear, we are warranted in ascribing them to such causes, even 
where its existence is not manifest.”* 
The febrific cause may arise from stagnant pools, from the banks 
of rivulets and fish-ponds in the neighbourhood that were never sus- 
pected of it, or it may be brought from a distance by unknown cur- 
rents in the air, and affect the residents of an apparently healthy si- 
tuation. It may do this too, when persons residing nearer the source, 
but in places of different altitude shall escape its baneful influence. 
“ Sometimes a house on the very bank of an unhealthy river will be 
comparatively healthy, while places, even high grounds, at a dis- 
tance, will be affected, manifestly because it (malaria) is transport- 
ed thither by breezes or currents of air.” Dr. Maccullock, in his 
invaluable work, cites numerous cases in proof of this position. 
Generally, however, the baneful product of vegetable decomposi- 
tion, if undisturbed by breezes and currents, hovers around its source 
in the lower stratum of the atmosphere, and in the same temperature 
of it ascends only to a certain height, leaving the other strata com- 
paratively free; hence the upper stories of houses near it are, with 
few exceptions, depending on vertical currents, far more healthy than 
the ground floors. When the air is heated by artificial fires, or by 
the sun, the poisonous exhalations are rarefied, diluted, or dispersed, 
and are less morbific; but on the approach of evening dew, they are 
condensed, and as it were, precipitated nearer the earth, where meet- 
ing new exhalations, they are concentrated and more baneful in their 
effects.! Hence, the beginning of the evening causes more cases of 
fever than midnight, when the poisonous exhalation is completely 
condensed upon the soil, and this last more than mid-day when it is 
rarefied and diluted and dispersed by heat.j; 
In respect to the distance to which malaria may be conveyed hori- 
zontally, by currents of air and wind, various opinions have prevail- 
* Macculloch. -f- Lind. 
t The Italians say, that however deleterious the evening1 air may he, the 
night air after 10 o’clock is not so.—American Quarterly Review, Vol. IV. 11 
ed, some having limited it about the spot where it emanated, while 
others think it may be transported many leagues. Blane presumes 
that the malaria never reaches beyond three or four hundred yards 
in a horizontal direction, provided it be calm. Macculloch thinks 
that the intermittents of the west of England and Scotland are caus- 
ed “by malaria transported from Holland, or the shores to the 
northward of it by fog and east winds.” There are numerous records 
of ships that make the distance which malaria has come and affected 
their crews from two to six miles. But the maximum distance is not 
yet satisfactorily ascertained. 
But what is the substance exhaled that bears so much disease on 
its wings? “ Perhaps the best and the truest account of its nature 
would be,” says Dr. Macculloch, “ an acknowledgment of utter ig- 
norance.” Miasma or miasm is its common name, and those who 
maintain that morbific exhalations proceed from animal as well as 
vegetable substances, distinguish this by the term marsh miasma. 
“ In Italy, the locality of such putrefying vegetables go by the name 
of maremmes, and the infectious matter there generated, when mixed 
with the atmosphere, is malaria, bad air. ” It was the ancient opi- 
nion that the deleterious quality of the air impregnated with it, is 
owing to animalculse, which invade the body through the lungs, 
sometimes perhaps through the stomach, and even through the skin. 
“This is a speculation,” says Dr. Macculloch, “ that dates as high 
as Lucretius, Varro, and Columella, which seems to have been 
revived in the days of the microscope, by Kercher, and some others, 
and appears naturally enough to have found favour with Linnaeus.” 
A learned reviewer of Macculloch at the south, has adopted this 
opinion, and maintained it with many plausible and ingenious argu- 
ments, which but for their lengthening this paper beyond reasonable 
bounds, I would gladly insert.* 
It was attempted by many learned chemists to discover the poison 
among the ascertained chemical gases, and it was referred succes- 
sively to carbonic acid, azote, hydro-carburetted, hydro-phosphuret- 
ted, and hydro-sulphuretted gas, and even ammonia, and also to a yet 
undiscovered compound of azote and oxygen, called septon. But as 
these gases can be applied to the human body in a more concentrat- 
ed degree in the laboratory without producing fever, it was attempt- 
ed by means of analysis which modern chemistry furnishes, to exa- 
mine the air produced by marshes, and to inquire whether it did not 
really contain some peculiar volatile substance or compound, an tm- 
* See American Quarterly Review, Vol. IV. p. 286. 12 
known gas, the true source of the evil. The eudiometrical experi- 
ments of Gottoni and Moschati, produced no results, as might 
have been anticipated. Nor is malaria cognisable by the senses. It 
is supposed by common observers to be the same as the effluvia arising 
from marshes, which makes so strong an impression upon the olfacto- 
ries in the twilight of evening. But although often, and perhaps ge- 
nerally, combined with such effluvia, yet “we do know,” says Dr. 
Macculloch, (p. 50,) “ from ample experience, that malaria occurs 
in abundance where there is no smell.”* 
How does malaria, (for such I shall call febrific exhalations,) find 
its way into the system ? Some have supposed that it is admitted by 
every accessible surface. Others have contended that it affects the 
system through the stomach; and others, that it acts on the nervous 
system through the olfactories;! others, that it is absorbed by the 
skin;! and a still greater number that it is inhaled by the lungs into 
the circulation. There is no positive evidence, however, to establish 
any one of these theories. The suggestion that the stomach was the 
channel, arose from the fact, that when malaria produces malignant 
yellow fever, it affects the stomach, producing vomiting of maloena; 
hence many physicians have advised persons who are exposed to ma- 
laria, to chew substances, and not swallow their saliva. Among 
these was the late Dr. Miller of New York, who afterwards enter- 
tained the belief that the lungs are the chief if not the only channels 
of admission. It can hardly be supposed that the saliva, if impreg- 
nated with malaria, could blend with the food in the stomach, while 
undergoing the process of digestion, and retain any putrid quality, 
since it is the nature of the gastric juice to correct putrefaction, and 
as to the strong bearing of yellow fever upon the stomach, we know 
from the experiments of Gaspard, Magendie, and others, that water 
impregnated with putrid vegetable substances injected into the veins 
will produce the same gastric inflammation, the same vomiting of 
maloena as appears in yellow fever, which shows that the stomach is 
not the necessary, and probably from its antiseptic power, is in fact 
not the real organ of entrance. That the lungs and skin are the en- 
trances is the more general belief, and is supported by better evi- 
dence. It was ascertained by Bichat that fetor from putrid animal 
matter gained admittance through the skin. Having discovered that 
the flatus from his bowels acquired the smell of the air of his dissect- 
ing room, he respired for some hours through a tube which led into 
the open air, while he remained in a room containing highly putrid 
* See also p. 73 and 75. 
f Rousseau. 
t Brochi. 13 
matter. The same effect was produced on the flatus, as when he re- 
spired the air of the room, and the same effect was produced by re- 
spiring the air of the room through a tube while he remained some 
hours in a pure atmosphere. These are offered as analogical proofs 
only, and even as such they are very imperfect, for the odour itself, 
as we have before observed, is not the malaria or febrific principle, 
and it is here an animal, not a vegetable fetor, that Bichat absorbed 
into his circulation from the lungs and skin. 
Wliat are the diseases produced by malaria?—This subject has re- 
ceived the particular attention of Dr. Macculloch, in his invaluable 
work on malaria. Few people in this country are aware of the mul- 
tiplied and varied forms of disease generated by this noxious princi- 
ple. It is believed by this author, and admitted by some others, who 
possess the best means of information, that nearly half the diseases 
which visit the human race proceed from this cause. Dr. Macculloch 
enumerates the following—intermittent and remittent, both simple 
and malignant, and nervous fever; dysentery and cholera; dropsy, 
oedema, obstructions of the liver and spleen; neuralgia, and particu- 
larly that form of the tic doloureux, to which he would perhaps add, 
(Dr. Cooper thinks,) the Dengue of Charleston and Havana. He is 
in some doubt as to scrofula and goitre, hebetude of intellect and ge- 
neral lassitude, rickets, hernia, rheumatism, sciatica, tooth-ache, 
asthma, peripneumony, dyspepsia, palsy, phthisis, and chlorosis. 
But most of these are certainly produced by other causes, and some 
of them are probably not entitled to a place in the list. The subject 
proposed for this dissertation embraces only fever, and under this 
head may be ranged as the offspring of malaria, the various kinds of 
intermittent, remittent, yellow fever, and a great proportion of the 
autumnal continued fevers of New England, whether inflammatory 
or typhoid. The yellow fever, as we shall attempt to show, may pro- 
ceed from other causes than vegetable decomposition, as also typhus 
gravior or putrid fever, whilst typhus mitior is oftentimes the conse- 
quence of fatigue and other debilitating causes. A minute examina- 
tion of the localities of this last disease in New England, will disco- 
ver it to be more endemic around factories, and on the shores of our 
rivers that have been dammed, and produced marshes, than else- 
where. 
To the above list may probably be added some cases of dysenteric 
fever and cholera morbus. This list of fevers bring in their train many 
chronic affections, such as visceral complaints, that may partake more 
or less of the nature of fever. 14 
There is much reason to believe that epidemic pneumonia, as it 
prevailed in the winter of 1812 and 13, in the army and navy on the 
frontiers, originated in the malaria of that section of country, imbib- 
ed into the system during the summer and autumn. The soldiers 
and sailors arrived on the lines at Sachet’s Harbour, Buffalo, and 
along the shores of Lake Erie, late in the summer, and in the begin- 
ning of autumn, and were encamped in places where the inhabitants 
had suffered much with intermittent and remittent fevers. The ac- 
cession of cold arrested the progress of vegetable decomposition, and 
of course the amount of malaria, whilst at the same time it so far 
braced the system of these men as to lessen the tendency to develope 
the train of symptoms that constitute a regular intermittent or remit- 
tent fever, though it produced a strong predisposition to them. This 
predisposition continued latent in the system, till roused into ac- 
tion by exciting causes, the principal of which was great and 
sudden exposures to cold, to which these men were subjected.* 
Nor does this opinion concerning the cause of such an epidemic stand 
alone. 
Dr. Hugh Williamson, speaking of the intermittents of North 
Carolina,! says— 
“ They disappear as the cold weather sets in, but they are frequently suc- 
ceeded by fevers of a different type, that are more fatal. Those fevers of the 
colder season are commonly attended by partial inflammation, whence they are 
denominated pleurisies of the eye, or of the head, at other times they affect the 
side. In those several forms they are equally dangerous. *** It appears chiefly, 
perhaps only, in those places where people are subject to intermittent fevers, in 
low sunken grounds, and along the banks of rivers.” 
Another paper, by Dr. G. Pillson,! gives the same views. After 
speaking of the prevalency of bilious fevers in the summer, he adds, 
* The well known tendency of organs below the diaphragm to take on dis- 
eased action in the summer season, and to suffer from malaria in the form of 
cholera, dysenteria, and black vomit, is not greater than the tendency of those 
above the diaphragm to participate strongly and intimately in fevers of the 
winter season in the form of catarrhs and pleurisies and pneumonias, and this 
tendency gave a pneumonic character to the fevers in question, caused by ma- 
laria during the first autumnal months, (and which lurked in the system till the 
extreme cold acted as an exciting cause in developing them, and in giving 
them a determination to the lungs,) and acquired for them the name and cha- 
racter of peripneumony. The typhoid symptoms attending the disease in most 
places, which caused many observers to name it typhoid-peripneumony, tend 
to distinguish this from the common pneumonia of New England, and to refer 
it to the causes we have mentioned. 
t Med. Repos. Yol. II. p. 156. $ Med. Repos. Yol. V. p. 137'. 15 
“ that in February, March and April, a fever proved very mortal in 
town and country. Some physicians called it bilious peripneumony.” 
There is some ground therefore for the opinion I have advanced, that 
epidemic pneumonia, when it succeeds to a sickly season in malaria 
districts, may be classed among the above fevers, which are more 
unequivocally ascribable to vegetable decomposition. 
II. The Effect of Animal Decomposition upon the Human Body. 
—If medical men have generally agreed in opinion respecting the 
febrific nature of exhalations from decomposing vegetables, it is far 
otherwise in respect to those emanating from animal substances. 
There are probably at this time a majority of the best informed part 
of the profession who regard animal decomposition as innoxious in 
its effects, or at any rate as not productive of fever of any kind; and 
this opinion is now prevailing with the profession both in Europe and 
America. This is owing in no small degree to the distinguished rank 
and talents of several individuals who imbibed the opinion, and main- 
tained it publicly, and with great zeal and ability, in works on fever, 
and in many of the periodicals of the present day. At the head of 
these may be named Dr. Bancroft, who, though not the first in 
declaring that animal putrefaction has no febrific qualities, has taken 
more pains to establish such a belief than any other individual. The 
other gentlemen I shall mention, are two distinguished professors, 
viz. Drs. Chapman and Warren of Philadelphia and Boston, who, 
to the many facts adduced by Bancroft as proofs of this doctrine, 
have added several corresponding ones from their own observation. 
The public teachers of medicine in our medical schools have likewise, 
in most instances, supported the same opinions. Such distinguished 
leaders in support of any doctrine, will naturally draw numerous ad- 
vocates into their ranks, and hence we find the opinions of these gen? 
tlemen pervading the profession generally. 
In the early ages of medicine, the opinions respecting the febrific 
nature of decomposing substances, was the reverse of what we have 
stated it to be at present. Identifying the morbific character of pu- 
trescent substances with their sensible odour, they regarded their 
pernicious effects upon the constitution as proportioned to their offen- 
siveness to the olfactories. “The Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, and 
Romans, were careful to dispose of their dead by burning, or by 
burying them far without the walls of their cities;” and their armies 
were cautioned against encamping long near a field of battle, lest the 
putrefying bodies of the slain should generate pestilential diseases. 
The same belief continues to prevail even in modern Europe. In 
France and Italy edicts were issued from time to time, by both se- 16 
cular and ecclesiastical authorities, from the eighth to the eighteenth 
century, against interments in churches and cities—and it is pro- 
bable, that but for the writings of Dr. Bancroft and others, the same 
belief would have continued to this time. As the subject is interest- 
ing to health and life, it is time that the opinions of Dr. Bancroft and 
his disciples, as well as the facts on which they are grounded, should 
be carefully examined, and collated with other facts that will tend 
either to confirm or refute them. The question proposed for this 
essay presents an opportunity for doing this, and with the deference 
due to the elevated rank and distinguished talents of the gentlemen 
we have alluded to, a feeble attempt is here made to canvass the 
evidence on both sides of the question. 
The reasons urged in support of the innoxious, or non-febrific na- 
ture of animal decomposition, are first, That the number of instances 
wherein fever has been actually ascribed to such a cause, by those 
who believe in its power to produce it, is very small, and the cases 
are not well attested. Second, That when the cause has existed in 
greatest abundance, and was therefore most likely to produce fever, 
this has not occurred. 
Let us now inquire what are the kinds of fever that have been at- 
tributed to this cause? Taking the nosological arrangement of Dr. 
Good, we may arrange idiopathic fevers under the following heads:— 
1st. Intermittent. 2d. Bilious remittent, simple and malignant; the 
last of which includes yellow fever. Sd. Hectic common inflamma- 
tory fever. 4th. Typhus gravior. 5th. Typhus mitior. 6th. Sy- 
nochus. From this list we are justified by the nature of their known 
causes, by the local circumstances of places where they occur, as 
well as by their general character, in dropping all except yellow 
fever and typhus gravior. Most, if not all practitioners, will concur 
in the opinion, that the other kinds have rarely, if ever been attri- 
buted to animal decomposition. Alibert remarks, that intense appli- 
cation to dissections has in some instances caused malignant inter- 
mittents in Paris. But I have witnessed no such effect there, nor 
elsewhere, whilst many physicians of the first respectability, who 
have passed years in such employments, deny that such fever has, 
in any instance within their knowledge, been ascribable to such a 
cause. 
The two fevers just mentioned have been variously named—typhus 
gravior being termed the hospital, jail, or ship fever, and by some 
malignant typhus or putrid fever; the other has been called typhus 
icterodes—malignant bilious remittent, but more commonly yellow 
fever. Those who believe that vegetable decomposition alone pro- duces fever, (leaving contagionists out of the question,) ascribe both 
kinds to this cause alone, and those who believe in the febrific quali- 
ties of animal as well as vegetable decomposition, attribute yellow 
and putrid fevers to each of these agents, or to both combined, under 
the name of vegeto-animal putrefaction. 
To the above causes of these two fevers may be added that of con- 
tagion, which is strenuously maintained by some as the most frequent 
cause, and is as warmly opposed by others. But as the question of 
contagion is foreign to our present investigation, and would require 
a volume to support or refute it, we here take leave of it, and return 
to the question. If yellow and putrid fever can be produced by ani- 
mal decomposition, why are there not more and better attested cases 
to prove it? 
In answering this question, we are to keep in mind the circum- 
stances, which we have already considered, which tend to give effi- 
cacy to vegetable decomposition as a cause of these fevers—they are 
intense heat, moisture, and abundance of decomposing materials. 
Now, a careful examination of the two cases will show that these 
three circumstances occur often, in respect to vegetable matter, 
and but very rarely in respect to animal matter. 
In the first place, in respect to heat and moisture, animal matter 
is rarely found like vegetables in suitable relation to them. It is not 
abundant like vegetables upon marshes, where the sun can act upon 
a broadly extended surface of it, and that too while in a constantly 
moist state. When exposed to the degree of heat that will elicit the 
cause of such fevers from vegetables, animal matter soon parts with 
its own moisture by evaporation, and becomes perfectly dried. The 
jerked beef prepared for commerce under the tropical sun of South 
America is a proof of this fact. Every anatomist knows that his pre- 
parations can be preserved in midsummer if hung in a draught of air. 
The human bodies preserved for centuries in the cemetery near Pa- 
lermo, were secured from putrefaction by heat, as are the bodies of 
those who fall in the deserts of Africa. 
Where, however, a carcass is not placed under such favourable 
circumstances for desiccation, we know that it can exist in a putrid 
state but for a comparatively short space of time. The law imposed 
upon animals, “ eat or be eaten,” is imperative, and we know, with- 
out referring to scripture, that “where the carcass is, there will the 
eagles be gathered together.” Carnivorous animals, large or small, 
are always at hand to consume every species of carrion. 
One of the signs of approaching malignant fevers, is increasing 
swarms of flies, and of other insects, which, whether they have just 18 
sprung from putrid matter that has escaped human observation, which 
is to generate the disease, or are provided for the purpose of remov- 
ing such matter, we know that they are present to consume putrid 
animal matter. 
Add to this, that in all populous places where such fevers spread, 
the police is always peculiarly observing of dead animal substances. 
Guided chiefly by the impressions made upon their senses, the pecu- 
liar offensiveness of effluvia from putrid animal substances, as well 
as the loathsome sight of them, leads to greater precautionary mea- 
sures. A dead cat in the street is removed and buried, whilst putrid 
vegetable matter remains collected around the walls of buildings, and 
putrid coffee is thrown into the docks. A dead rat concealed in a 
dwelling, will extremely annoy the inmates till every pains is taken 
for its removal, or will drive them to some other part of the dwelling 
that is less scented, whilst putrid potatoes, turnips, and cabbages in 
the cellar, of an hundred times the bulk, are often entirely disre- 
garded. The crew of a ship in sickly ports in hot seasons, will, if 
left to their own inclination, sleep on deck, in an atmosphere loaded 
with morbific vegetable exhalations, whilst a single putrid rat, or 
even mouse, concealed in the cabin or forecastle, would cause a tho- 
rough purification of the apartment. The shores of rivers and stream- 
lets, bordered by marshes, are often visited in a summer’s evening 
with delight and temporary refreshment, whilst the stench of a 
slaughter-house, in the neighbourhood of a city, though containing 
scarcely a visible portion of decomposing animal matter, is turned 
from with disgust. With such precautionary measures in the one 
case, and neglect of them in the other, because the senses are dif- 
ferently affected, can it any longer excite wonder that the fevers we 
have mentioned, supposing them producible by it, should so rarely 
proceed from animal decomposition, and yet so frequently from ve- 
getable decomposition? Seeing too that the latter is so abundant 
about populous places, and requires only a long-continued heat, from 
80 to 100°, to act upon it, whilst putrid animal matter is at such 
times, for the reasons we have mentioned, so rarely to be found. 
Much has been said of the influence of city interments upon the 
public health, and those who hold to the innoxious nature of animal 
putrefaction, might refer me to burying grounds for sufficient quan- 
tities of decomposing bodies. It is not worth the time to examine 
the fine spun theories published by Dr. Pascalis, to show that “ the 
fetid gases in a grave can permeate the superincumbent earth, and 
exhibit phosphorescent light hovering over the spot, and impregnat- 
ing the atmosphere with morbific principles.” Sufficient for the pre- 9ent discussion is the fact, that, when the yellow fever broke out in 
New York, from Coentis’ slip,* and spread through the neighbour- 
hood, its progress was immediately arrested by covering the putrid 
animal and vegetable materials from which it issued, with fresh 
earth. But because dead bodies when covered with earth, as in this 
case, and also as in graves, do not produce fever, are we to infer 
that such bodies would not produce fever if exposed to the open 
air? 
But secondly. When animal decomposition has existed in greatest 
abundance, it has failed to produce fever. 
Here we are met with the often-recited accounts of Bancroft, and 
others, respecting the mass of putrid animal matter exposed to the 
air in the exhumation at Paris and Dunkirk, and in dissecting 
rooms, and the putrid emanations from the burial ground at Seville. 
Let us examine them—first stating them in Dr. Bancroft’s own 
words. 
** Many writers of celebrity, and among them the great Lord Bacon,” says 
Dr. Bancroft, “ have thought that no effluvia were so infectious and pernicious 
to mankind, as those which issue from putrefying human bodies; and it is still 
believed, that, in their milder state, they may cause putrid fevers, and in their 
more concentrated state, a true pestilence. There are facts, however, on a 
large scale, which completely decide this question;—two of these deserve par- 
ticular notice. The first relates to the exhumation made in the church-yard of 
St. Elvi, at Dunkirk, in the year 1783: and the other to those made three years 
afterwards, in the church-yard of the Saint Innocens, at Paris. As the under- 
takings and results were similar in both instances, I shall, to avoid repetition, 
here describe only the latter, which I have preferred, because the corpses here 
taken up were much more numerous than at Dunkirk, and probably constituted 
the greatest mass of putrefying animal matter, of which we have any accurate 
information. The church-yard of the Saint Innocens, at Paris, situated in one 
of the most populous quarters of the city, had been made the depository of so 
many bodies, that, although its area enclosed more than one thousand seven 
hundred square toises, or near two acres, yet the soil had been raised by them 
eight or ten feet higher than the level of the adjoining streets; and upon the 
most moderate calculation, considerably more than six hundred thousand bodies 
had been buried in it, during the last six centuries, previous to which date, it 
was already a very ancient burial ground. Numerous complaints having been 
made concerning the offensive smells, which arose from this spot, and some- 
times penetrated into the adjoining houses; and the public mind being greatly 
alarmed, it was at last determined to forbid all future burials there, and to re- 
duce so much of the superstratum as would reduce the surface to the level of 
the streets. This work was undertaken in 1786, under the superintendance of 
M. Thouret, a physician of eminence in Paris, and in two years he accom- 
* Medical Recorder, Yol. VII. p. 468. 20 
plished the removal of that superstratum, almost the whole of which was im- 
pregnated, or infected, as M. Thouret styles it, with the remains of carcasses, 
and of quantities of filth and ordure, thrown upon it from the adjoining 
houses.’5 
“ * The exhumations,’ says this gentleman, (in the narrative of them, which 
he published in the Journal de Physique for 1791, page 253,) ‘were princi- 
pally executed during the winter, but a considerable part of them was also 
carried on during the greatest heats of summer. 
“‘They were begun with every possible care, and with every known precau- 
tion; but they were afterwards continued, almost for the ivhole of the opera- 
tions, without employing, it may be said, any precaution whatever,- yet no dan- 
ger manifested itself in the whole course of our labours—no accident occurred 
to disturb the public tranquillity.’” 
The facts here recited from Bancroft to prove the innoxious nature 
of putrid animal matter, relating to the exhumations at Paris and 
Dunkirk, make a strong impression on the mind of one who merely 
glances at them. But a close examination of particulars will show, 
that if Dr. Bancroft has told the truth, he has not told the whole 
truth, but like a skilful advocate, rather than an impartial judge, he 
has suppressed important parts of the evidence, which if related, 
would prevent him from making out his case, and take away the 
support he intended to derive from them, to his favourite hypo- 
thesis. 
In referring to these, and all other cases of animal decomposition, 
we are to bear in mind the circumstances we have already related of 
vegetable matter, as necessary to constitute it a cause of malignant, 
yellow, or putrid fever. And in the first place, in respect to heat. 
This it has been shown, must range above 60° of Fahrenheit for 
several days, in order to generate these fevers from vegetable decom- 
position. Now what was the temperature at the time the exhuma- 
tions took place. “ They were commenced at Paris in December, 
1785, and continued till May, 1786—renewed again in the follow- 
ing December, and continued till February, and from the month of 
August 1787, to the month of October.”* There were then only one 
ot two months of the time in which malignant putrid, or yellow 
fevers, from even vegetable putrefaction, or any other cause are sup- 
posed to occur. “They took place in the night season only.”t 
Johnson says “ that miasm from marshes is expanded by heat, and 
that the evening air cools and condenses it. That it is the descend- 
ing vapour of evening that precipitates with itself the miasm that had 
been elevated by heat, and hence twilight of evening is the time of 
* Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, art Exhumation, Vol. XIV. p. 196. 
t Ibid. 21 
greatest danger,” and that it is comparatively safe afterwards, is 
stated, as before observed, by the Italians. Now in the present case, 
there was no emanation in the daytime, because the bodies were not 
uncovered till evening for removal, and then the cool air had no 
tendency to evolve and raise it from them. 
2d. As to quantity of matter, “six hundred thousand bodies,” says 
Bancroft, giving an impression that an immense number were ex- 
posed at one time, when in truth they were removed as fast as un- 
covered. 
3d. To give credibility to the account of such numbers being 
buried, he is obliged to admit that they were six centuries work, yet 
not to lose by this concession of great length of time they had lain, 
he takes care to add in a note, that ninety thousand, (and this I ad- 
mit is sufficient for his purpose as to numbers,) were buried within 
thirty years. But he is cautiously silent as to the time of the last 
interments, and also as to the time that animal matter is supposed to 
retain its febrific qualities. Now what is the fact in respect to these 
particulars. In respect to the duration of the morbific principle, in 
decomposing ’animal bodies, Maret,* an eminent French writer, 
states three years as the time for complete decomposition, when the 
grave is four feet deep, and four years when it is six or seven.t 
What says Fourcroy P This gentleman, who was employed for chemi- 
cal purposes in the exhumation of St. Innocens, states, “three years as 
a term during which the septic poison must take place. Speaking of 
this very exhumation, he remarks, (p. 142,) “we had a strong desire to 
satisfy ourselves, by experiment, what was the nature of the destructive 
air, or ‘ septic explosion,’ emitted from corrupting bodies, but we had no 
• Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, Yol. XIV. p. 192. 
f M. Burdach, in his Physiology, (Leipsic, 1810,) states that the decomposi- 
tion of dead bodies takes place at three periods. The first is that of fermenta- 
tion, which lasts many months; then there is a tumefaction of the body, from 
the development of gaseous substances which escape with an extreme fetor. 
In the second, which continues from two to three years, the soft parts are con- 
verted into a brown or green pulp; the mass lessens, because it is in a great 
part volatilized and converted into carbonated hydrogen, sulphur, phospho- 
rus, carbonic acid, ammonia, and vapour. During the third epoch, the ga- 
seous products completely escape, and there remains a dark-coloured earthy 
matter. 
I might here add the generally received opinion of Dr. Fordyce, that 
putrid animal matter, put in contact with recently dead animal matter, hastens 
the process of decomposition, and there was enough of putrid matter at all 
times in this yard to do this, whenever a recent body was interred, 
t Pascalis, p. 150. 22 
opportunity, in consequence of there having been no burials there for 
three preceding years; the last deposit there being in 1782.” Now 
the month of August 1787, was the time when “ the bodies were re- 
moved in the hottest weather,” as Bancroft relates it, which was 
five years after the last interment, and two years after morbific 
miasm, according to Maret and Fourcroy, had ceased to exist. Nor 
is it at all likely that the last interments, five years previous to said 
August, were specially reserved for this hot month, but most probably 
much older interments. There were, therefore, no bodies removed 
that were in a stage of decomposition favourable for producing fe- 
brile diseases, in any weather, however hot, even had the whole num- 
ber been exposed to the air of mid-day at once. 
But “the bodies,” says the report, “were in every stage of de- 
composition.” This expression is, however, to be understood as qua- 
lified by the time, that is, they were in every stage of decomposition 
after more than three years interment, in which time the septic ema- 
nation is completed. And should circumstances of soil or manner of 
interment prevent putrid fermentation from taking place within that 
time, it is probable that the deleterious emanations are decomposed, 
and recombined in new and harmless forms. 
Another fact, particularly worthy of notice, which Bancroft un- 
fairly or ignorantly omits to mention, is— 
'* The great number of torches and fires that lighted all parts of the cemetery 
and shed around a melancholy glare,” and “the thick clouds of smoke that sur- 
rounded and covered the place of labour.”* 
Fires and smoke have been found of great utility, especially in mi- 
litary service, as was proved on a large scale by Buonaparte, before 
Mantua; and in Africa, the experiment in a small way has proved 
successful. 
“ Emigrants proceeding to Alabama and other southern regions, from the 
low countries of Carolina, find no injury from sleeping in the open air, as their 
custom at night is to build a large fire of logs, and lay themselves beside it, on 
some part of their baggage. The effect of fires in destroying malaria, is plain, 
if the fact of its existence depends upon the presence of moisture; for the 
moisture being evaporated by the heat, the poison is either dispersed with the 
vapour, or if separated from it, falls innoxious, and probably inert. It is on the 
same principle that smoking segars on the decks of ships is salutary. The heat 
and smoke keep a dry atmosphere about the uncovered face, and the air re- 
spired, being thus deprived of miasmata, is safe.” 
What then becomes of this formidable array of six hundred thou- 
sand bodies removed from the cemetery of St. Innocens, which occu- 
* Diet, des Sciences Medicales, Vol. XIV. p. 187. pies the front ground of the picture drawn up by Bancroft, and is 
copied verbatim in two of our public journals, in Boston and Phila- 
delphia, by two of the first medical men in our country, and minute- 
ly repeated before classes, by almost every professor of theory and 
practice in our medical schools. 1st. They were removed as fast as 
they were uncovered. 2d. The exhumation took place at a season 
of the year when malignant fevers caused by malaria are known and 
believed by Bancroft not to exist, with the exception of two months, 
August and September, and in the night season too, when the degree 
of heat of those months is not sufficient to produce malaria. 3d. They 
were removed full two years after the time that an eminent chemist, 
who was present, states that they had ceased to be productive of 
morbific gasj and lastly, with such precautions and preservatives by 
fire and smoke, as would probably have disarmed the exhalations of 
their poison had there been any. 
Another case of disinterment, quite as formidable, is given by 
Bancroft, which took place at Dunkirk in 1783, and which he de- 
clines relating, “because,” he says, “the undertakings and results 
were similar in both instances, and he wished to avoid repetition.” 
When did this take place? It was commenced on the 26th of Febru- 
ary, and finished on the 16th of April,*' a season in which no fevers 
from malaria, of either vegetable or animal origin are believed even 
by Bancroft to exist. 
Now I appeal to the reader, I appeal to the candid part of the pro- 
fession at large, whatever may be their opinion of the noxious or in- 
noxious nature of animal decomposition, to decide if it was fair and 
candid in Dr. Bancroft, to shuffle the two reports of Paris and Dun- 
kirk exhumations together, and turn up the face of one, and declare 
to the world that it is an exact representative of the other, when the 
most material point, the “ hottest weather,” is stated in the one case 
to have existed, and is italicised by him as a most material fact, and 
could not have existed in the other, the weather being cold, partly 
in winter. 
Dr. Bancroft next goes on to say— 
“ If this result from taking1 up nearly twenty thousand bodies in different 
stages of putrefaction be insufficient alone for my purpose, there is another 
equally conclusive in its nature and extent. 
“ It is well known that M. Berthe, Professor in the School of Medicine at Mont- 
pellier, and two of his colleagues in that University, were sent by the govern- 
ment of France, into Spain, to examine and report upon the nature of yellow 
fever, which had proved so fatal in several towns of Andalusia, in 1800. M. 
* Diet, dej Sciences Medicates, article Exhumation, Vol. XIV. p. 196. 24 
Berthe has published the report of the commission, of which he was a member, 
and in it has mentioned, that, being at Seville only a few months after the epi- 
demic had ceased, he frequently visited the burying places just without the 
city, in which the victims of the fever had been interred; that in these excur- 
sions he was accompanied by the French consul at that city, and had occasion 
to converse much with the guards stationed at these places, and with the grave- 
diggers still employed in them, and he states, that besides these, many thou- 
sands of the inhabitants of Seville also came thither, some from curiosity, and 
others in processions, to testify their sorrow and respect for their departed 
fi’iends. In one of these grounds, south-westward of the city, ten thousand bo- 
dies had been buried; in two others, seven or eight thousand; and in that of 
Triana about four thousand. 
“‘The heats of the spring,5 says M. Berthe, (which I need not observe are 
considerable at Seville,) ‘were at this time beginning to be felt, and the 
ground of these burial places, being clayey, was already cracked into wide 
and deep crevices, through which a fetid odour was exhaled, the result of 
the decomposition which was going on among these heaps of bodies.5 
“ Filled with alarm at the calamities which might be produced by such masses 
of putrefaction, M. Berthe and his colleagues represented the supposed dan- 
gers to the Spanish government, and then went to Cadiz, where they found the 
churches more or less filled with putrid emanations from the same cause; but 
as they did not discover that these supposed fomites of infection were produc- 
tive of any mischief, their fears concerning them seem at length to have sub- 
sided completely; for, in their reply to the president and members of the board 
of health, who had requested a statement of their opinions, they expressly de- 
clare their belief, that ‘ if the yellow fever could be produced by the effluvia 
arising from putrefying bodies, it was evident that such a misfortune must al- 
ready have taken place, through the imperfect manner in which the tombs and 
vaults, pointed out by them, had been closed, a defect which they had observ- 
ed even in the churches most frequented.5 Thus it appears that the putrid 
emanations from the bodies of many thousand persons, who had recently died 
of the yellow fever, did not, and therefore could not produce that disorder. 
“ To the preceding facts I may add another, which is related by a man whose 
veracity is as little to be questioned as his exalted philanthropy—I mean John 
Howard, in his work on Lazarettos, page 25. 
“ ‘ The governor at the French hospital at Smyrna, told me, (says Mr. How- 
ard,) that in the last dreadful plague there, his house was rendered almost in- 
tolerable by an offensive scent, especially if he opened any of those windows 
which looked toward the great burying ground, where numbers were left 
every day unburied, but that it had no effect on the health of himself or his family. 
An opulent merchant in this city, adds he, likewise told me that he and his fa- 
mily had felt the same inconvenience without any bad consequences.5 
“If the exhalations from piles of bodies destroyed by the plague itself, and 
corrupting in the open air, were thus incapable of generating the contagion 
either of fever or of plague, even during the prevalence of a pestilential con- 
stitution of the atmosphere, (if any state of the atmosphere ever deserved that 
title,) it may, I think, be safely affirmed that there are no circumstances under 
which putrid animal matter can be supposed ever to produce febrile contagion. 25 
“ I have now before me a great number of similar facts, well authenticated, but 
those which I have just stated, will probably suffice to convince most of my 
readers, that if putrefying animal matters are not completely harmless, they are 
at least innocent of the charge of producing contagious fevers.” 
In respect to the mission of M. Berthe from France to Seville, 
Dr. Bancroft after giving the foregoing report, goes on to notice it 
thus. “The heats of the spring, says M. Berthe, (which I need not 
observe are considerable at Seville,) were at this time beginning to be 
felt, and the ground being clayey, was cracked into wide and deep 
crevices, through which a fetid odour was exhaled, the result of the 
decomposition which was going on among these heaps of bodies.” 
“ Thus it appears,” says Mr. Bancroft, “ that the putrid emana- 
tions from the bodies of many thousand persons who had recently died 
of yellow fever, did not, and therefore could not produce that disorder.” 
The italicised lines are supplied by Dr. Bancroft himself, and serve 
to show his readiness to bend and qualify evidence to suit his pur- 
pose. “ The greatest heats of spring, says Berthe,” and who, let me 
ask, will pretend that the thermometer ranges at Seville so high as 
80° in the spring for a succession of days, or that the yellow fever 
ever prevails there till the summer is far advanced. Yet, apprehending 
that the word spring would imply a moderate temperature, he gratui- 
tously supplied a qualification to make the heat greater in the mind 
of the reader than it actually was, and such as is requisite to produce 
malignant fevers from malaria, which, as we have before stated, 
ranges during the prevalence of yellow fever at 80° and upwards. 
Yes! “ greatest heats of summer,” which in the Paris exhumation 
Dr. B. thought of so much importance in his report that it made him 
italicise the words, but which in the Dunkirk case, that took place 
in cold weather, he though of no consequence to distinguish it from 
that of Paris, yet here he would fain make the impression that 
“ greatest heats of summer,” (or that degree which he elsewhere 
deems essential for the production of yellow fever,) occurred in the 
spring! And because these bodies “ did not produce yellow fever,” 
at a season of the year when such fever never exists from any cause, 
the gentleman concludes forthwith, and positively declares that they 
“ could not produce that disorder” at any season. 
As to the report of Mr. Howard respecting the governor at the 
French Hospital at Smyrna, and of the fetor in his house, we may 
observe, that the febrific principle was probably in a great measure 
excluded by keeping the windows closed. Dwellings in the neigh- 
bourhood of slaughter-houses in Brooklyn, are affected in the same 
manner as is the highway. But the smell is not, I repeat it, the fe- 26 
brific principle, nor is it to be understood as always proportioned to 
it. This story about Smyrna comes third-handed, and without any 
statement of the distance of the burying yard from the house, or of 
the temperature of the air. 
In the appendix of Bancroft is a long account of the innoxious ef- 
fects of dissections. But are these ever prosecuted in the heats of 
summer, when yellow fever prevails? 
The account of an adipocire establishment near Bristol in England, 
is unaccompanied by any statement of the season of the year, or of 
the temperature of the atmosphere, or the number of persons em- 
ployed or exposed to the effluvia, or of the amount of putrid animal 
matter existing at the same time. 1'he same imperfection attends the 
accounts of the dead bodies washed on shore near Aboukir, the glue, 
soap, candle, catgut, and leather factories. I contend for no more 
in respect to heat, moisture, and abundance of materials, to give fe- 
fibric activity to animal decomposition, than is already conceded by 
Bancroft and others to be indispensable for the production of yellow 
fever from vegetable decomposition. When, therefore, the above in- 
stances cited by Bancroft, to which many others have been added by 
the Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore writers, when I say, these 
instances are accompanied with evidence that heat and moisture con- 
curred at the same time, and in the same degree, as is admitted to 
be necessary for the production of yellow fever from vegetable mat- 
ter, then, and not till then, is any of this negative kind of evidence 
admissible against the febrific power of animal decomposition. As 
well might one contend against the generally received doctrine that 
marsh miasm possesses febrific qualities, and, pointing to the swamps 
and marshes, both fresh and salt, of New England, demand why 
these do not annually produce fever. 
“In regard,” says Bancroft, “ to the morbid effects supposed to 
fesult from the putrefaction of fish, they appear, so far at least as re- 
gards fever, to have had no existence.” This assertion I shall have 
Occasion to notice hereafter, and refute by positive testimony to the 
contrary. That the boiling of blubber should be harmless notwith- 
standing its offensive effluvia, is what might certainly be expected, 
Considering the great power of fire as before stated on several autho- 
rities to destroy malaria. 
The use of fish for manure, as herrings, alewives, &c. is adverted 
to by Bancroft, and also by the gentlemen before alluded to in Bos- 
ton and Philadelphia. It should be borne in mind, however, that 
these fish are most of them buried, and that such of them as are above 
ground, are strewed over it, and from their small size are soon dried; 27 
they are not thrown in heaps in the manner that putrid coffee, pota- 
toes, and cabbages, were, when they produced yellow fever, as ap- 
pears from the several reports contained in the Medical Repository, 
and other publications. From those it seems that a sort of intestinal 
heat and fermentation in the centre of the mass is necessary to pro- 
duce yellow fever. Now, the time required for this heat to generate 
in animal or vegetable substances from the evolution of new gases, 
is many days in the human body buried many months, and almost as 
many weeks above ground, whilst two or three days are sufficient to 
desiccate small fish strewed upon the ground, and prevent the fer- 
mentative process from taking place, although they may evolve disa- 
greeable effluvia as stated to be the case by the Boston and Philadel- 
phia writers, of those strewed upon the grounds near Newport, and 
on the banks of the Delaware. 
Thus, I have examined nearly all the facts related by Bancroft, and 
the other gentlemen alluded to, and have shown that there were cir- 
cumstances connected with each that weaken its force, and in almost 
every instance destroy it altogether, as a proof against the febrific 
power of animal decomposition. 
One other substance remains to be noticed, to which these gentle- 
men attach much importance, as proving that animal decomposition 
is not febrific. It is human ordure. “ Putrid human excrement,” say 
they, “seems equally incapable of producing fever,” and then they 
repeat the statements of night-men. But this substance, let it be 
borne in mind, if it proves any thing in the case, proves too much. 
Excrements are a part of the result of a process performed upon both 
vegetable and animal materials. If the fact were established that it 
did produce fever, and I were to offer it against the opinions of these 
gentlemen, they would turn upon me, and say that it is the vegeta- 
ble part of the materials forming the excrement that causes the fever, 
for they all maintain, that putrid vegetables are febrific. But ad- 
mitting, for the sake of the argument, that the excrement is the re- 
sult of animal food alone, it is no longer the same animal matter as 
regards its susceptibility of febrific putrefaction. It has undergone 
the digestive process, has been imbued with, and acted upon, by the 
gastric juice, which we know has a strong influence upon the putre- 
factive process; it even corrects this, and in some animals subdues it 
to an astonishing degree, the most putrid meats being rendered perT 
fectly sweet by it in their stomachs. Nor is it consistent with our 
views of the wisely ordered economy of nature, to suppose that man 
should, by an indispensable process of his system, be constantly pro- 
ducing a substance that could act as the bane of life. 
The “atrocious smell” they advert to, as emanating from such 28 
substances, is not, let it again be repeated, the cause of fever? be- 
sides, if it were the cause, this is as offensive in the form of flatus 
within the bowels, as when exhaled from the substance in a privy, 
and is in more immediate contact with the absorbents. In a word, 
human excrements possess the properties common to neither animal 
nor vegetable matter? it is a substance sui generis,* and its emana- 
tions cannot be fairly referred to, to support the doctrine that either 
animal or vegetable putrefaction possesses febrific properties. 
The Boston and Philadelphia writers attach great importance to 
the exhumation of St. Innocens, as settling the question that animal 
decomposition never causes fever. In this they choose to “ go for 
the whole,” whilst Bancroft, from whom they have copied this account 
of St. Innocens, and almost every other fact they advance, warily 
shields himself by a saving clause in his conclusion, which they have 
not seen fit to avail themselves of. The clause is this. “ If putre- 
fying animal matters are not completely harmless, they are at least 
innocent of the charge of producing contagious fevers.” Contagion 
was his subject of discussion, and he does not positively deny that 
fevers which are non-contagious, (and such he regards yellow fever,) 
can be produced by animal decomposition. 
The Boston writer, with a spirit of candour that marks his whole 
paper, concludes it by saying, “ Should a difference of opinion exist 
on any important point, I hope these remarks will have the effect to 
call it forth.” I therefore respectfully ask leave to dissent from his 
conclusion in one particular, even were the facts sound and incon- 
trovertible from which he draws it. The case, (says lie,) of the ceme- 
tery St. Innocens has been considered to be conclusive of the non-fe- 
brific nature of animal decomposition, if no positive and satisfactory 
facts can be adduced on the opposite side. Now, I maintain that 
this cemetery case, and all the other facts cited, amount to no more 
than negative evidence, and that unless the gentleman can show that 
they combine every circumstance that could favour the operation of 
animal putridity in causing fever, which would be next to impossi- 
ble, the evidence amounts only to probability, and is not “ conclu- 
* In proof of this it may be observed, that where the whole food is exclusive- 
ly vegetable, as is that of the ox kind, the emanations from the excrements are 
perfectly harmless. I challenge any one to adduce a well authenticated case 
of yellow fever caused exclusively by barn or stable manure, and yet nothing 
is more common than heaps of it round every farm yard throughout the middle 
and northern states, and under circumstances too of heat, moisture, and abun- 
dance of the mass, the most favourable for engendering malaria. Why then 
expect it from human excrements? 29 
sive,” even if no facts were adduced on the opposite side to prove 
that it does cause fever.* 
One well established fact, however, proving beyond doubt that 
animal decomposition possesses febrific properties, is sufficient to 
controvert all the negative evidence to the contrary, which the gen- 
tlemen have adduced. It is now my purpose to offer many such facts. 
1. The Rev. Henry (Jhanning in a letter to Dr. Mitchell, see 
Medical Repository, Vol. II. p. 402, states it as his own opinion, and 
that of Dr. Coit, Dr. Lee, Mr. Woodman, and Mr. Holt, that 
the yellow fever which prevailed in New London, in 1798, was 
caused by putrid fish. Of the whole number of cases of fever, (246,) 
“ two hundred and thirty-one were clearly traced to the spot where 
the sickness commenced, that is, the persons were conversant, or had 
been in that part of the city a few days before they were seized,” 
and “ scarcely a single person escaped the disorder who resided in 
that part of the city. 
“ It appears,” says Mr. C. “ that there was a large quantity of dried fish, in a 
bad state, in four or five stores, within twenty or thirty rods of each other, and 
all in the limits referred to. These fish were taken in the Straits of Bellisle, 
which being a high northern latitude, they were cured with a much less quan- 
tity of salt than usual. They were brought to this port in the autumn of 1797. 
The heat of the summer having been very great, many of these fish were found 
to be in a moist, slimy state, early in August last. From a quantity lying in 
bulk, in a store occupied by Mr. Jones, (who fell a victim to the epidemic,) a 
quantity of green and yellow purulent matter ran upon the floor. It was 
thought by the owners, that if they were spread in the sun, in the open air, 
the fish might be preserved; which was done, extending them a considerable 
distance in the street and wharves. While thus exposed to the excessive heat 
of the sun, with light winds, the effluvia in the neighbourhood were very offen- 
sive.” 
Mr. Channing states that there was not even a shadow of ground 
to suppose that the disease was imported—and the situation of New 
London is elevated “ with scarcely any low lands to generate marsh 
miasmata.” The harbour is spacious, near the sea, from which re- 
freshing breezes are experienced during the summer. The heat of 
the summer of 1798, it may be mentioned, exceeded both in inten- 
sity and duration, what had been known within the memory of the 
oldest inhabitants, t 
* The Philadelphia writer expresses himself to the same effect as the Boston 
writer, in the following words. “ It follows from the preceding series of facts, 
that animal putrefaction alone cannot be assigned as an epidemic cause, or 
scarcely indeed as a morbid agent.” 
f See also a second letter from Mr. Channing, Vol. II, p. 405. 30 
2. Dr. Samuel Osborn relates in the Medical Repository, Vol. I. p. 
210, a case of yellow fever, caused by exposure to the exhalations of 
putrid beef. The patient, a soldier, was excused from duty on ac- 
count of a violent and obstinate gonorrhoea; and a lodging was as- 
signed him in a house without the garrison, on Governor’s Island. 
In a few days, he was attacked with symptoms of yellow fever, and 
as his physician observed, in his visits, a very offensive smell in the 
house, he ordered the cellar under the patient’s bed to be examined; 
where were found three barrels of beef in a state of extreme putrefac- 
tion. “ So exceedingly offensive was the smell emitted from this mass 
of animal putrefaction, that the soldiers who were employed to re- 
move it, were several times forced to desist, for the purpose of 
breathing fresh air, before they could accomplish their design.” On 
the removal of the beef, the patient gradually mended. 
3. Dr. Coffin in a pamphlet on the danger of interments, states 
that— 
“ A man was killed by accident in Orange, New Hampshire. In about ten 
weeks after the burial, the body was taken up to be deposited in a different 
place. Twenty persons were present at the disinterment of the corpse, which 
was in a putrid state. Thirteen of these persons fell sick of fever not long after 
their exposure to the putrid gases from the dead body, and several of them 
died.” 
“ There was no other assignable cause for this fever, than these noxious 
gases from the dead body, the season and the place being otherwise quite 
healthy.”* 
4. In Johnson’s Medico-Chirurgical Review, Vol. IL N. S. p. 202, 
there is related an instance of fever of the putrid kind, and resem- 
bling plague, produced from a putrid human body. 
“An American merchant ship was lying at anchor in Whampoa Roads, six- 
teen miles from Canton. One of her crew died of dysentery; he was taken on 
shore to be buried. No disease of any kind had occurred in the ship from her 
departure from America, till her arrival in the river Tigris. Four men accom- 
panied the corpse, and two of them began to dig a grave, unfortunately, they 
lit upon a spot where a human body had been buried about two or three 
months previously, (as was afterwards ascertained.) The instant the spade 
went through the lid of the coffin, a most dreadful effluvium issued forth, and 
the two men fell down nearly lifeless. 
“ It was with the greatest difficulty their companions could approach near 
enough to drag them from the spot, and fill up the place with earth. The two 
men now recovered a little, and with assistance reached the boat, and returned 
on board. On the succeeding morning they were visited by an assistant-sur- 
* I regret that the temperature of the weather is not given, though I have 
understood that it was hot. 31 
geon from an English Indiaman in the roads, who reported the following symp- 
toms, viz. very acute head-ache, with a sense of giddiness and dimness of sight, 
(which had existed more or less from the moment of opening the grave;) eyes 
of a peculiar muddy appearance, resembling that generally observed in cases 
of Indian cholera; oppression about the praecordia; dull heavy pain in the re- 
gions of the heart and liver, with slight palpitation at times, and fluttering 
pulse; sense of extreme debility, with occasional convulsive or spasmodic 
twitchings of the muscles of the lower extremities; nausea; slight diarrhoea; 
rigors, succeeded by flushings of the face, neck, breast, and upper extremi- 
ties; tongue white, and much loaded; pulse from 110 to 120, weak and irregu- 
lar; urine scanty and high-coloured; skin sometimes dry, sometimes covered 
with a clammy sweat. On the fourth day from the commencement of the at- 
tack, numerous petechia; appeared over the breasts and arms; and in one of 
the patients a large bubo formed in the right groin, and another in the axilla of 
the same side, which speedily ran to suppuration. To one the disease proved 
fatal on the evening of the fourth day; to the other, on the morning of the fifth. 
For two days previously to death the gums bled freely. The symptoms were 
so completely similar in both the cases, that it is needless to repeat them 
here.” 
The post mortem appearances evinced a highly putrid state of the 
system.* 
One of the two not immediately engaged in digging the grave, was 
attacked on the eighth day from his being on shore with “ violent 
retching, and labouring under all the symptoms of the former pa- 
tients in an aggravated degree. Was bled twenty-five ounces, and 
recovered.” . 
5. Mr. Samuel Russel, of New York, in a letterf to Dr. Mitchell, 
states, that two hundred barrels of herring, in a considerably offen- 
sive condition, were shipped, in July, 1801, to St. Croix, and the 
market being bad, were taken to Kingston, Jamaica, where they 
were placed in store. 
“ By this time the fish were discovered to be fast spoiling, and advancing ra- 
pidly through the putrefactive process. The master of the store and his clerk 
lived and slept in a room directly above that in which the fish were now lying 
and corrupting. They both were invaded by yellow fever.’’ 
6. The yellow fever which prevailed in Newburyport, in 1796, ap- 
pears to have been caused by putrid fish. 
“ Respecting the origin of the disease,” says Dr. Coffin, “ there have been 
but two opinions. Some have supposed it was generated here; others, that it 
was imported from the West Indies in a vessel which arrived in May. The cap- 
tain’s account is, that about twelve days before his arrival here two of his men 
died on board of a putrid fever, after which he immediately cleansed the 
* See Med. Cliir, Rev. Vol. II. p. 203. f Med. Repos. Vol. V. 1822, p. 345. 32 
vessel by washing it with vinegar, smoking it with tar, and scrubbing the cabin 
and steerage floors. He threw over the clothes which the sick had worn, and 
their bedding. Their other clothes were locked up in their chests, and after- 
wards sent home to their friends in a neighbouring town, without communicat- 
ing any infection: the rest of the crew escaped the disease. Here it may be re- 
marked, that if the vessel, on her arrival, had been stationed at some other part 
of the harbour, it would have been conspicuous, whether it brought the fever 
or not. But not far from the wharf at which it was unloaded, a great quantity 
of fish had been dressed for the West Indies, and the entrails left exposed to the 
air. The weather being uncommonly moist and warm, the exhalation was very 
offensive to the neighbourhood. In one of the houses nearest the fish offal, the 
three first persons were seized with the disease; and within twenty or thirty 
rods the greater number of its victims lived. The majority of those who re- 
covered lived in other parts of the town. Most, if not all, who had it at a dis- 
tance, had frequented the infected neighbourhood, but did not communicate 
the infection to their attendants. These aro the principal facts from which the 
fever’s origin must be determined.”* 
7. “In the summer of the year 1783, M. Faure, a merchant of Narbonne, in 
Lower Languedoc in France, bought a house which had previously been occu- 
pied as an anatomical hall; and, being desirous of having a cave dug in the cel- 
lar, employed three men to do it. In digging, they came to the wall of a ne- 
cessary, which had been the common receptacle of the remains of human sub- 
jects, and which was covered in to prevent detection; and, on extracting a few 
of the stones with their picks, an offensive, putrid matter rushed through the 
aperture, and suffocated them. M. Faure, going to see the workmen, descend- 
ed but two or three steps before he fell senseless. The neighbouring people, 
perceiving the putrid smell, went to the house, and of nine that entered to 
bring out the sufferers, six died. M. Faure was removed, but died in four 
days; and the unfortunate labourers survived their release but a day or two. 
“In the mean time, the smell increased to such a degree, as to create a pes- 
tilence, and the neighbours were obliged to remove; but a great many of them 
died. The Mayor of the city being informed of the circumstance, had the 
cellar filled up, and the house closed. But the malignant effluvia had per- 
vaded the town, and a great many died of the pestis. The disease was attended 
with the black vomit, but not communicated by contagion. ”f 
8. In Washington, a small village, containing about four hundred inhabitants, 
situated six miles from Natchez, and occupying a high situation, remote from 
any swampy ground, the yellow fever prevailed in 1828, and was unquestiona- 
bly occasioned by a quantity of putrid fish and hams lodged in a grocer’s store. 
A minute and faithful history of the fever is given in the Medical Recorder for 
April, 1826, by a distinguished physician, Dr. S. A. Cartwright, on whose 
mind there appears to have existed not the shadow of a doubt that it was solely 
referrible to the above-mentioned cause. The great length of his paper pre- 
vents its insertion in this essay. 
9. Dr. Caldwell, in his appendix to Alibert, p. 61, traces the yellow fever of one 
* Med. Repos. Vol. I. p. 504. 
t Med. Repos. Vol. IV. p. 245. season in Philadelphia, to heaps of decaying oyster remains. The account is 
drawn out at too great length for insertion, but the proofs are satisfactory to 
my mind. 
10. In Dieppe, a city in France, a pestilential disease was produced in 1776, 
by putrid oysters in the shell. Cited by the foregoing author from “ observa- 
tions on the epidemic diseases, and constitution of France.” 
11. “It appears, from a statement by Dr. Dick, published in the Medical Reposi- 
tory of New York, that the pestilential fever which prevailed in Alexandria, in 
1803, originated from the septic exhalations thrown into the atmosphere by a 
large bed of putrid oyster-shells.” 
12. Dr. Rand, in his history of the yellow fever in Boston, relates the case of a 
person who was employed to remove some hides in a very putrid state, upon 
a point of land opposite Wheeler’s wharf, and who sickened and died on the 
third day. This history of Dr. Rand describes the masses of animal matter in a 
putrid state on Fort-hill, Stoddard’s wharf, &c. and the cases of the fever that 
originated from them.* “Three lads, apprentices to Mr. Manston the cooper, 
by repacking some of this beef, were seized with the fever and died.” 
Now, had the same number of persons been employed in moving 
the coffee on the wharf in Philadelphia, and all shared the same fate, 
is it likely that such a difference of opinion would have existed re- 
specting the origin of the fever in that city in 1793? 
13. A case is reported by Dr. Cogswell, of Hartford, of a man who was attacked 
with putrid fever, by passing a night in a boat containing barrels of putrid and 
highly offensive beef.f 
14. “ In 1748, at New York, a great quantity of salt beef, partly putrid, having 
been purchased by poor persons, took it to their chambers, and they were al- 
most all victims of the yellow fever. ”t 
15. Ship General Green sailed from Newport to the West Indies, and a great 
part of her crew were attacked with malignant fever. She had on board putrid 
fish and beef, that was so offensive as to require being thrown overboard. Here 
I would observe, that, although the animal putrefaction was the most apparent 
cause, yet some may feel disposed to cavil, and attribute it to vegetable putre- 
faction in the vessel. 
10. In the month of July, 17—, a very corpulent lady died at . Before her 
death she begged as a particular favour, to be buried in the parochial church. 
She had died on the Wednesday, and on the following Saturday was buried ac- 
* Med. Repository, Vol. II. f See Webster on Plague and Pestilence. 
* Die. des Sciences Medicales, Vol. XXX. page 548; extracted from Valen- 
tin, p. 121 to 124. 34 
cording to her desire. The weather at the time was very hot, and a great 
drought had prevailed. The succeeding Sunday, a week after the lady had been 
buried, the protestant clergyman had a very full congregation, upwards of nine 
hundred persons attending, that being the day for administering the holy sa- 
crament. 
It is the custom in Germany, that when people wish to receive the sacra- 
ment, they neither eat or drink until the ceremony is over. The clergyman 
consecrated the bread and wine, which is uncovered during the ceremony. 
There were about one hundred and eighty communicants. A quarter of an 
hour after the ceremony, before they had quitted the church, more than sixty 
of the communicants were taken ill: several died in the most violent agonies; 
others of a more vigorous constitution survived by the help of medical assist- 
ance; a most violent consternation prevailed among the whole congregation and 
throughout the town. It was concluded that the wine had been poisoned. The 
sacristy, and several others belonging to the vestry, were put in irons. The 
persons accused underwent very great hardships: during the space of a week 
they were confined in a dungeon, and some of them were put to the torture, 
but they persisted in their innocence. 
On the Sunday following, the magistrate ordered that a chalice of wine un- 
covered should be placed, for the space of one hour, upon the altar; the hour 
had scarcely elapsed, when they beheld the wine filled with myriads of insects; 
by tracing whence they came, it was perceived, by the rays of the sun, that 
they issued from the grave of the lady who had been buried the preceding 
fortnight. The people not belonging to the vestry were dismissed, and four 
men were employed to open the vault and the coffin; in doing this, two of 
them dropped down and expired on the spot, the other two were only saved 
by the utmost exertions of medical talents. It is beyond the power of words to 
describe the horrid appearance of the corpse when the coffin was opened. The 
whole was an entire mass of putrefaction; and it was now clearly perceived that 
the numerous insects, together with the effluvia which had issued from the 
body, had caused the pestilential infection which was a week before attributed 
to poison. It is but justice to add, that on this discovery, the accused persons 
were liberated, and every atonement made by the magistrates and clergyman 
for their misguided conduct.* 
17. “ The sepulchral vaults of the principal church of Dijon, having been en- 
tirely filled, in consequence of the winter of 1773, which froze the ground of 
the common cemetery to such a depth that it could not be opened, orders were 
given to remove the bodies from these subterraneous repositories. Several at- 
tempts were made to purify the air by the detonation of nitre, by fumigations 
of vinegar, by burning a variety of perfumes, storax, benzoin, &c. &c. and by 
sprinkling the pavement with a large quantity of anti-pestilential vinegar, known 
by the name of vinegar of the four thieves. The odour of the putrid effluvia was 
merely masked for a moment by these operations, and soon re-appeared with 
its former activity, spreading to the neighbourhood, where the symptoms of a 
* Gazette of Health, No. I. p. 2. 35 
contagious fever began to appear. At this period I was consulted on the means 
of destroying the source of the distemper.”* 
The above instances are sufficient in my mind to establish the fact 
that animal decomposition in particular stages of it, and under certain 
circumstances, will produce certain fevers, viz. the yellow and the 
putrid. Omitting further evidence in my possession, I shall now con- 
tent myself with adverting in a few words to what seem to be neces- 
sary conditions to give activity to the process. 
1. It must be in certain stages of the process, viz. the fermenta- 
tive, as Burdach of Leipsic, before mentioned, terms it; that is to 
say, from two or three weeks to several months, varying no doubt 
according to circumstances of situation and state of the materials. 
The above instances confirm this opinion. 
2. The heat must range at from not far below 80 to 100 degrees, 
if the materials are uncovered, though in a grave it must necessarily 
be less. 
3. The mass must be large and moist. 
4. I may remark that it seems to be immaterial whether the sub- 
stance be free from salt, or imperfectly cured by it, though the evidence 
from the foregoing cases, and from those that are to be added in the 
appendix, rather goes to prove that a little salt hastens the process, 
and this accords with the effects of partially salted vegetables as 
salt marshes; and it is remarked by Webster and M. Brown, that 
fresh meat in water slightly salted, will corrupt sooner than in per- 
fectly fresh water. 
Let it be recollected as a matter of some weight, that the negative 
evidence of Dr. Bancroft and others, viz. the cemetery of St. Inno- 
cens, Dunkirk, &c. were adduced by a man who aimed at a victory 
over what are called contagionists, and in doing so, to establish by 
evidence the innoxious nature of animal putrefaction, in which he has 
endeavoured to make the most of the facts his industry could collect, 
and who has evidently perverted them, (in some particulars at least,) 
to suit his purpose; whilst the instances I have adduced as proof 
against him are from the pens of men who had no favourite hypothe- 
sis to establish, nor any motive to deviate from a plain statement of 
facts. There does appear then sufficient evidence for the conclusion, 
that yellow and putrid fevers do result from animal decomposition, 
though for reasons before stated, viz. scarcity of materials in the pro- 
* Treatise on the Means of Purifying' Infected Air, &c. Hy L. 13. Guyton de 
Morveau, p. 25. 36 
per season of the year, and other necessary circumstances, they are 
comparatively of rare occurrence. 
To the evidence drawn from cases, I will add the result of the ex- 
periments of Gaspard* and Majendie, made to show the effects of pu- 
trid animal and vegetable substances introduced into the veins. Sup- 
posing vapour to be the medium by which the febrific agent is evolv- 
ed, how does it affect the system ? It is first inhaled into the lungs; 
these, according to Majendie, expose a surface at each inspiration, 
“ several times greater than that of the human body;” thus, admit- 
ted, it enters the blood, for odours are found by experiments to en- 
ter the circulation at a single inspiration. Now Gaspard proves that 
putrescent animal substances injected into the blood produce pros- 
tration of strength, dysentery, inflammation of the stomach and in- 
testines. Water impregnated with vegetable putrefaction, produced 
similar though less violent symptoms. M. Majendie has also produc- 
ed in the same manner diseases resembling those which result from 
vegetable malaria. He ascertained that infusions of different kinds of 
putrid animal substances were followed by different effects, “that 
water in which putrid fish had been soaked,” (mark the coincidence 
with the cases I have cited of yellow fever produced by fish,) “ pro- 
duced when injected into the blood, symptoms resembling yellow 
lever. ” 
III. The comparative influence of both animal and vegetable decom- 
position as a cause of fever.■—I will not undertake to say what would 
be the proportion of cases of fever, if decomposing animal matter 
were as abundant in hot weather as vegetable matter is; nor will I 
say that it would then cause all the kinds of fever that I have shown 
in the first part of this essay do proceed from vegetable malaria. Per- 
haps it is the adynamic kind of fevers only, as malignant, yellow and 
putrid, that can be produced by it. If so, there would then be a vast 
dispi’oportion in the number and kinds of fevers that result from the 
two causes. As it is, taking into consideration the disparity as regards 
quantity of the two kinds of matter actually existing in a state of de- 
composition, I think that the cases I have shown authorizes the infer- 
ence, that the febrific effects of animal and of vegetable decomposi- 
tion, so far as regards putrid and yellow fever, are about equal. 
Providence, R. I. August, 1830. 
* Gaspard, as given in page 24 to 37 of Vol. I. No. I. Monthly Journal of Me - 
dicine. 
THE END.