ON THE SANITARY URGENCY — OF THE- EloritUi S.1 iip Cciiial. BY JOHN GAMGEE. WASHINGTON, D. C.: R. O. POLKINITORN, PRINTER, 1 880 . 1*6 xr «o * r? o o ON THE Sanitary Urgency of the Florida Ship Canal. By JOHN GAMGEE. Science has been retarded by a confusion of tongues. No branch of it illustrates this better than medicine. Im- perfect as we must admit natural history classifications to be, and barbarous as are their nomenclature, the defects are more glaring in the field of progressive pathol- ogy. Precision of knowledge demands precision of lan- guage. We name things long before we . understand their nature. Naming them wrongly, or without reference to their most general characteristics, we convey no just idea of their significance, nor of their relations to causal or con- sequent phenomena. Bead the list of synonyms for that most inadequate ex- pression — yellow fever. Until this was invented last cen- tury the more general appellations “bilious fever,” malig- nant fever — “ effects of climate ” — and in Spanish or Port- uguese — the far better and, perhaps, best of all names, so far adopted — “calenture,” or heat disease, were in vogue. Sailor’s fever, stranger’s fever, “ flux ” and “ dysentery,” with a host of others too numerous to mention, enshrouded the past ravages of this pest in a mystery which baffles the historian, until penetrating beneath the surface of casual re- search. This Babel, within a centur} 7- , has confounded yellow fever with land endemics, characterized by yellow- ness. The bilious remittent of the Mississippi Valley — the yellow disease of this Continent, which is but an aggravated chronic result of malaria, African and West Indian fever, p < 2L f l \ bt> 4 have all crowded the pages of hasty writers, with the effect of still leaving a remnant of physicians, who believe this plague to be a product of American soil. Candid men will admit that, until quite recently, the do- main of yellow fever discussion and writings might be de- nominated chaos. No man did more to perpetuate an un- fathomable diversity of opinion and thought than La Boche. For five and twenty years he has imposed his illogical and rambling views on American students of medicine. It is time this should cease. Can we briefly indicate a point of contact, which will fur- ther the interest and instruction to be derived from such discussions as I now propose? The prevailing and, un- doubtedly correct view is, that no such epidemic afflicts this soil, without the- introduction of some foreign element by ships. It is an exclusively naval importation. We shall not discuss whether every vessel has received poison from sea or land. There are persons — a very few — who be- lieve that, as in small-pox, a pre-existing case fathers every instance of such sickness. The majority believe that the human system is no essential factor in the production and transmission of this cumulative and virulent poison. Whatever may be the derivation of the potential el- ement which contaminates the ship, since it reaches all known lands from the sea , we may term it pelagic. For a century and more the idea has prevailed that this is a genuine fever — a pyrexia. It is certainly very differ- ent from all diseases with definite periods of incubation ; periods so definite that, a few hours, if not minutes, count the variations in usual or normal development. These diseases run a distinct and unalterable course, with a peculiarly marked crisis, to be followed by resolution or death. There is so much to be said in favor of yellow fever being a form of simple, and usually, severe poisoning, by material totally extraneous to human development, 5 in contradistinction to every form of human virus, producing true and specific fevers, that I propose we shall call it — what it surely is — a pest or plague, not a fever. Hence, my name for it — “ Pelagic Pest,” or “Pestis Pel- agia ” — plague of or from the sea. In favor of this designation I shall adduce the views of only one authority. My choice is guided by the fact that Auguste Frederic Dutroulau, the renowned French Naval surgeon, has been quoted repeatedly, by Dr. Chaille, in op- position to my views. It being understood that I not discussing the origin of yellow fever I shall not quote the mid-ocean observations of Dutroulau. In the Parisian Ar- chives of Medicine for 1853 he declares the conclusion au- thorized that “ the miasma of yellow fever derives one of its essential characters from the influence of the sea.” More recently, in 1868, he testifies that the “ primary cause of yellow fever is localized on the sea — an infection proper to certain maritime localities.” Even forgetting his earlier and most valuable observations, on yellow fever at sea, on board the Cuirassier, and accepting the contagious character of yellow fever, he insists on primarily recogniz- ing, as a duty, the protection of land from infected vessels. It must therefore be admitted that Pelagic Pest correctly defines that most general feature, distinguishing yellow fever from every other known disease. This is more than can be said for any other name hitherto employed. Last winter I devoted some time to New Orleans. The impressions left on my mind after a careful survey of the location and experiences of the city, were, that from a geo- graphical point of view, it would have been difficult to have found a site for readier protection from any plague of the sea, whilst surrounded, by the most extensive and pro- lific sources conceivable, for the development of land en- demics. The solid structures and paving of the embanked civic area, protect inhabitants from immediate soil em- 6 anations. Winds, however, waft down the streets, in a line with unhealthy marshes, the poison which produces well marked cases of intermittents, and Dr.Gustavus Devron, to whom I am indebted for these and other data, has shown how exempt are the inhabitants of streets, crossing the lines on which atmospheric currents most readily reach citizens’ houses. No wind blows yellow fever up the noble Mississippi. One hundred and ten miles of rapid river would, in it- self, afford obstacles to the ocean contamination of New Orleans. But the Gulf beyond, now traversed by fever ships from the Carribbean Sea, through the Yucatan Pass, or from Havana, and much more rarely entering it by the Florida Straits, is in itself a haven of purity — a geo- graphical area, within which the absolute preservation of this noble city, from pelagic contamination, may be surely and permanently consummated. The Gulf of Mexico receives the waters and debris of rivers which influence its currents, fauna and temperatures. It is swept round by the equatorial current which is mod- erated by an influx of colder waters, whereby a bottom temperature of 39° is obtained in contrast to 54° in the Mediterranean. The Gulf Stream, forcing its way past the Keys, bearing with it the genial heat so essential to the life and comfort of millions in Europe, has ever proven the friend of the mariner and preserver of ships crews, by car- rying them into cooler latitudes. The accurate and extensive investigations, relating to the Atlantic and the Mexican Gulf ; — the services unequalled, and unmarked by any token of a Nation’s gratitude, of that most learned, most modest and most zealous student of the sea — Commander Maury; — the arduous labors of the officers of the Coast Survey, and the results of the most successful scientific expedition, ever inaugurated by a scien- tific society, under the leadership of such men as Naresand i Wyville Thomson, afford us material for a just insight into the main features of marine phenomena and their influence on life. Dr. Turner has rendered it quite unnecessary for me to discuss, the pernicious conditions under which human be- ings still float from land to land. To these and to these mainly, we owe the possibility of pelagic infection devasta- ting not only crews, but all confined spaces on sea and land, which are, directly or indirectly, accessible to the emana- tions of a foul vessel. The freight cars of railroads have carried these as far as Louisville and beyond, and I com- mend to your attention Dr. J. W. Holland’s report and map on this one point. Admitting, therefore, that vessels, especially the wooden craft of the New World, are unfit abodes for man any- where, the consequences may be surmised of any specific contamination, whether by a pure contagion like small- pox, the transmitting elements of relapsing fever — as amongst the Irish emigrants of 1847 — or of the putrid bilge, due to tropical Atlantic waters, removed from oxygen and Nature’s unceasing cycle. What is that cycle ? In the tropics, with a mean sur- face heat of 75° to 80°, abundant evaporation -establishes ocean currents from the Arctic and Antarctic, which, whilst lowering to below 39° the bottom temperature, in- duce vertical and horizontal variations, essential to the economy of the universe. The vertical influences may be briefly stated as consist- ing in high density of surface water, with an abundant sup- ply of oxygen, amounting to 33 or 35 per cent, An ex- uberant development, within reach of atmospheric influence, of a marine fauna comprising globigerinse, which are not only most abundant but largest in the warmest waters, and still more limited by temperature in their distribution, are the forms of Pulvinulina, The structureless flesh or sar- 8 code of these animals, constitutes the food of swarms of other pelagic animals, and, as with the structure of higher organ- isms, it is constantly decaying ; swarms are, at each in- stant, perishing ; their calcareous skeleta gravitate to the bottom and form the ocean bed, which, according to depth, presents a varied structure. In the regions of globigerina ooze, the beautiful microscopical characters of a “new chalk ” are discernible, with some, not many, living crea- tures. A little deeper the degeneration has advanced fur- ther, characterizing the grey ooze of the Atlantic bed, and, deeper still, is a red clay, the product of very simple chem- ical changes in the organic deposit, which Mr. Buchanan seems successfully to have repeated in the laboratory. Down in the lowest depths, the colder waters, from the poles, bear more oxygen essential to the chemical changes, than is to be found in the intermediate ocean layers. The amount is much less than on the surface, but it is more than at an average of 800 fathoms, at which point it at- tains a minimum. Thus says Sir Wyville Thomson: “ In deep water, a wide intermediate zone between the surface and the layers immediately above the bottom is nearly des- titute of animal life — at all events, in its higher manifesta- tions.” With a steadily descending temperature from the sur- face to the sea-bottom, there is a progressive diminution in the number, size and variety of living forms. The At- lantic has a mean depth of 2,000 fathoms, so that an idea may be formed of the singular contrasts presented by a sec- tion of the living upper strata, the relatively lifeless mid- dle, and the deeper laboratory of physical and chemical transformations raising in aeons the ocean bed. The balance of nature is modified, in its apparent phe- nomena, by the slightest appreciable conditions. This may be illustrated by the contrasting forms of pelagic animals, on either side of the Isthmus of Panama. A difference of one 9 degree of surface temperature, between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific, is one of the obvious data, giving us a clue to the different manifestations of disease, in the two oceans near the line. It has been attended, since the probable severance, of a common bed of shallow waters, by uprising lands in tertiary, or post tertiary times, by such a vari- ation in the evolution of creatures from a common stock, that the specific characteristics, of sea-urchins and other an- imal forms, now demonstrate a complete isolation and con- trast of the faunae of the two oceans. Nature’s wheel re- volves more rapidly the warmer the sea. Where there is most life we have most death, but, whatever may be the degree, as the chemist Dumas has said, there is an eternal round in which death is quickened and life appears, but in which matter merely changes its place and form. There is one distinctive feature of the ocean' which must be borne in mind, in relation to the subject under discussion. It, is the great scarcity of plant life — the few algae add lit- tle to the sargasso , in the way of plant shelter and support for quaint and parasitic animals. Vessels sailing for the equator, from north or south, pass from cold to temperate and from temperate to warm lati- tudes. They are struck as they advance by the increasing phosphorescence of the sea, which attains to such brilliancy, that the agitated waters, surrounding a moving ship, rival and exceed the starry heavens in brilliancy, and enable a person to read small print on deck. Numerous pelagic animals emit this light, and it has been thought by a French Physician that one creature, Noctiluca Miliaris , specially phosphorescent, was the critical element inducing yellow fever by its death and decay in the stagnant bilge. This with many other intricate points may possibly be made the subject of special experiment and prolonged research. My object to day is to insist on the conditions, established by science, in relation to the distribution of heat and living or- 10 ganisms, on surface ocean waters, and which tend to the in- creasing danger, of a special and intense bilge -foulness, as ships approach and are detained within the belts of tropical calms. A prolonged and unceasing study of this question, in all its bearings has tended to impress on my mind the probable truth of a generalization, which may one day procure for its author a just renown. In a note on the last page of a work published in 1856, on the Basis of Medical Science, by Dr. J. C. Faget of New Orleans, there is a casual, but tren- chant, distinction drawn between the citrabiliary fever of animal origin , yellow fever, and the paludal fever, intermit- tent of vegetable origin. The probabilities are that the pu- trescent water crammed with Sarcode, near or within the tropics, is the true parent of yellow fever infection, just as we know that vegetable decay surrounds this city with agues and bilious remittent. The sea is the home, par excellence, of perishable animal forms, whereas the soil or humus is the product of a plant decomposition, which attains undue and dangerous proportions with excessive heat and moisture. The practical conclusion to be drawn from the very brief exposition I have made is that a ship, to be kept health} 7 ', must be driven fast through the dense beds of pelagic life, or kept out of them as much as possible. It is fortunate that the dangerous area is confined to the Atlantic, but, un- fortunately for New Orleans, the nearest approach to the mouth of the Mississippi, from the sea, for many vessels, has been through the Caribbean Sea, and in the direct course of the equatorial current. A look at the map will show you, that vessels, from the north and north-east, need not descend below the 30th par- allel of latitude to reach that of this city. The Tropic 'of Cancer, the dangerous West Indian seas, the hot Caribbean, need not be traversed if the base of Florida be provided with 11 a channel, a great highway, draining nearly a thousand square miles of fertile lands, and hastening the transport of emigrants and merchandise to and from the Gulf ports. So great, so paramount, have the advantages of this great work appeared to me, since first studying the probable re- sults — in relation to yellow-fever extensions — of cutting the Panama Canal, that I could not resist adding to the weighty reasons already assigned for the construction of the Florida Ship Canal — those which a naturalist and sani- tarian may justly emphasize and enforce. Since 1855, when a Report, on Survey for a Ship Canal Across the Peninsula of Florida, was published by the Corps of Topographical Engineers, the country has attained to commercial developments which indicate that whatever con- clusions were then arrived at, as to the value of this canal, time has indicated, that the results, in the future, are likely to exceed the most sanguine anticipations of enthusiastic promoters. I must ask you, however, to cast your eyes on a table of figures, for which I am indebted to the Chief of the Statistical Bureau of the U. S. Treasury. Immedi- ately after the route for the Canal was surveyed, immigra- tion fell from 51,169 persons, in 1854, to 20,388, in 1855, and last year it had dropt by a rapidly-descending scale to 3,297. 12 IS oo 00 >*si % § S § 1 It* c> e ■to ^ <© >5 5 KS !>§ •§ *> s <§s c .si -< f> os «r g-8 •S 4s « £ *°l 1 O t- 1 t- 05 i-H 03 COCO J 628,446 ■/ Years. 1878c 1879c Total «COOQO©ffl01'®OCOi>0 £-03t'-CQC5C31D10'^C010£-CO ICCOl'O^COWNlOt'OCOO co co c© -rf io ic i> t^t^'co' co of of ««’OOOCiV)^>0 , OCSO^C50 eO'^lOCDJ>OOOSO-r-(t- gooooooogogooooooogooooooooooo 05005 - 1 — I 0300 G 500 Q 005 C 5 C 3000 OQOOO^OWOOOiOOCOWOOiC ( 5 !OQOMOHm!>«iOWOC 5 ID ^ CO of of CO" tH o" GO tH CO -r-T CO 03 CO t- I ID CO ID ©3 i— IOJ hHt t SSrOoooouoooootto osoOHow^iocoi'OoaoHci ■afl kOlDlDlDlOOlDlDlDlOlOCOCOO 00 00 GO 00 GO GO 00 00 00 GO 00 00 GO GO 00 1 D© 3 CDCO-'^C© 1 D©© 31 DC 5 £-OOCOC 5 C 010 CD 0000000003 ID 05 CO '^005 Oi005D^MOi>OOGOlOrHQO« CO*" GO J> O' i—T © Of O' CO* IO ©3 rjf 05 i-H t— I tH i-h r-t 03 CO i— t T^iDCDi>0005O-rH03C0TtHK .ID HOOTICHWO^LO^OOOD • GO DlO-^OO^rHOOfflOCiiHOT • £- 1-H tH t-T r-f -r-T ©0 ©f CO*" ! 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