Pg. 351

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November 2, 2020

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE: CHOLERA IN ST. JAMES’S.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 351

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 the anchorage on the 31st, apparently in healthy condition, expecting no epidemic disease. Elated with the result of the visit to the Crimea, all energies were directed to the preparations for an intended siege, and it was generally believed that we should depart from this about the middle of the month, to commence active operations. No one hesitated in anticipation,— hone dreamed of an unseen agency that might postpone the expedition, and could lay low, in a single night, as many of a ship’s crew as have been struck off a ship’s muster-book after severe engagements. •

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 To be maimed, or even to die in battle, is the “ fortune of war,” of which each may coolly calculate the chances, knowing that glory, etc., await the survivors. But to perish by scores in a single night, all aid being applied in vain, none knowing who may be next seized, or what limit will be placed to the calamity, is a situation which will always appal men of courage, unimpeachable amid the horrors and the din of battle.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0  A week after the return of the fleet to Baljik, on the, 7th of August, about 4000 French troops encamped on the heights abreast our anchorage. These were part of the 1st division of the army that had marched to Kostenje, about ten days before. By it the first blood had been drawn on the part of the Allied army. The loss in battle was small, but they had encountered an enemy more terrible than the Russian. The cholera had broken out among them, and attacking 400 on the first night, had destroyed 60. The total loss had been something incredible. It was said, that out of 11,000 men, not less than 5000 had perished in a few days. This dreadful calamity was attributed to drinking water from wells that had been poisoned by throwing in putrid carcases.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Putting aside the question of intentional poisoning which always presents itself as the most ready way of accounting for such destruction, perhaps some support to the theory, that water is the medium by which cholera poison is conveyed, may be found in this circumstance, and in another of which I was witness. These soldiers, wearied by marching from a focus of cholera infection, were seen, many of them, washing their persons and clothing in the stream from which all the French ships of war, and the majority of the English fleet, obtained their water. This was going on on the 7th and 8th, and on the nights of the 9th and 10th, the disease burst out, with, great violence among the crews of several ships.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Some English ships were the first to suffer, on the night of the 9th, and they proceeded to sea the next morning. On the night of the 10th other English ships and some of the French began to suffer, and the latter in an almost unparalleled manner.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 The two Admirals’ ships, Montebello and Ville de Paris, were terribly affected. On the previous day they had been in as healthy a state as usual, and in the night the cholera attacked, in the former, 200 men, of whom 40 lay dead in the morning, and in the Ville de Paris there were also many deaths. The French fleet sailed on the afternoon of the 11th, and the following morning saw the English ships also at sea.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 On Sunday, the 13th, after receiving sick reports from all the ships, the Commander-in-Chief hoisted a signal, “All are improving,” which was cheering to all.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 14th.—Several ships hoisted their ensigns half-mast while engaged in the burial service of their dead. It blew fresh this day, and at night the courses were reefed, which implies the necessity of closing the lower deck ports, by which ventilation was greatly impeded.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 By signal we learned, that 5 ships were improving, 3 not better, and only 2 unaffected.

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 On this day, about noon, the Britannia, which had left port in a favourable condition, was attacked suddenly, and in twenty hours upwards of 50 of her crew had expired. We knew nothing of the calamity that had overwhelmed our leader until the following evening, when “ reports of the sick ” were sent from each ship to the Admiral. By this time, the evening of the 16th, 80 had died, and more than 200 remained in greater or less danger.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 The night of the 16th must have been one of great consternation on board her; the epidemic went on with unchecked violence, the officers were voluntarily attending on the sick, and the very few of the crew who had not been attacked, or who were not assisting their unfortunate messmates, were found, quite insufficient to perform the duties of a ship when under sail, and the Admiral, therefore, determined to return to Baljik, taking with him the Trafalgar and Albion, also badly affected.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 The crew of the Britannia were at once sent away from the ship in small parties, into the numerous transports that remained idle, and it appears, that by this procedure, the epidemic influ

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 ences operating among them have been greatly moderated, if not extirpated.

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Next to the Britannia, the Albion has suffered most severely, and then the Trafalgar, Vengeance, Furious, Rodney, London, and Queen, the last having lost only two.

¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 As far as I can gather, the losses are, in round numbers— Britannia, 130; Albion, 60; Trafalgar, 30; Furious, 18 ; Vengeance, 16; Rodney, 6 ; London, 5; Queen, 2; Retribution, 1.

¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 You may regard this as an approximation somewhat below the reality.

¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 If, as they say, the epidemic has ceased, and there are “no fresh cases,” then we may add 5 per cent. for deaths by consecutive fever, and compute our total loss at 270 men, and that the number of men put hors de combat by sickness will not be less than 300 more. This will show how greatly our strength has been reduced in a few days, perhaps as much as it would have been by an attack on Sebastopol. I am sorry to add, that, as far as we know, the loss of the French exceeds our own, and is, probably, more than double, as two of their ships have not had less than 350 deaths between them.

¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 Our Professional affairs are by no means satisfactory. We are numerous enough when our ships are employed in summer cruises in the Mediterranean ; but our present reduced numbers are totally inadequate to such emergencies as this.

¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 CHOLERA IN ST. JAMES’S.

¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 [To the Editor of the Medical Times and Gazette.]

¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 Sir,—I have not yet quite completed the statement I hoped to have sent to you for insertion in this week’s Journal of the general results of the recent epidemic, as seen in the Middlesex Hospital; but I cannot delay till another week several questions regarding the cause of the late fearful outbreak, which has clothed in mourning so many families in the Soho and St. Anne’s districts of St. James’s parish. They are questions, it appears  to me, which all connected with the Hospital that has borne  the brunt so heavily have a right to put, and which the public has a right to see answered, when they are called to contribute to the relief of the widows and orphans whom this visitation

¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0  has cast penniless and friendless on the world. And it is not  my fault that they were not addressed ten days ago to the St.  James’s Vestry, through the same columns in which the luckless  Commissioners of Sewers are denounced by zealous correspondents as the chief cause, and castor oil is lauded as the only “rational” cure, of this inscrutable pestilence. Having repeatedly visited the district during the height of the epidemic, and made careful inquiry on the spot regarding the circumstances that led to so calamitous an invasion, it has struck me as very strange that no one has asked—

0. ¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0
1. 1. Whether the disease was not prevalent in the Soho district for ten days, and seriously so for a week, before Friday, the 1st of September ?
2. 2. Whether, in these circumstances, any such means as were proved to be useful in 1849—as house-to-house visitation and the establishment of houses of refuge in the neighbourhood—had been adopted to check its further progress ?
3. 3. Whether, on the contrary, the disease had not been raging with its utmost intensity for thirty hours before the Vestry met to ask each other what should be done ?
4. 4. Whether the medical visiters, who ought to have been appointed three weeks beforehand, were not appointed for the first time on the afternoon of Saturday, the 2nd of September, i.e., after scores of victims had been already sacrificed ?
5. 5. Whether, on their appointment, these gentlemen were not informed that their remuneration for attendance at all hours of the night and day, and for supplying medicine, would be at the rate of 3l. 3s. a-week ?

¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 0 As it is possible that common report has wronged the Vestry of St. James’s, in giving an affirmative reply to all these questions, I think it but fair to give them an opportunity of disabusing the public mind, and of giving to the world a true statement of the case, before I venture to draw any conclusions from the tragical events which have startled so many during the first fortnight of September. But until these questions are met with a decided negative, it seems to me far worse than useless to be systematically leading the public mind on a wild-goose chase, among sewers that have been closed up for months or years, and plague-pits that were dug and filled in the days of Robinson Crusoe and his gifted biographer.

¶ 27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 0 Yours, &c. A. P. Stewart.

¶ 28 Leave a comment on paragraph 28 0 Grosvenor Street, Sept. 27, 1854.