Report of the committee appointed to investigate the causes and extent of the late extraordinary sickness and mortality in the town of Mobile

Part 2

Chapter 2236 wordsPublic domain

The season has been a very uncommon one, and has produced as uncommon effects; and wherever it has operated upon local causes, it appears to have produced malignant fevers. In the town of Mobile,[1] art and labour could scarcely have combined a more destructive mass, for the production of malignant fever, under the operation of such a season, than is found to have been laboriously collected together in filling up lots, streets, and wharves: and the committee would do injustice to their own feelings, and their sense of the duty they owe their fellow-citizens, were they to suppress a warning voice of the danger that yet awaits them: if they be not zealous and active in removal of the numerous causes of disease, daily trodden under their feet, daily presented to their view. While they walk the streets, disease will assail them in every quarter, while they slumber in their beds, they will breathe the poison of death, until the yards and enclosures are cleansed—until the streets and wharves are radically reformed; and then, by the blessing of God, we shall prosper in health.

JACOB LUDLOW, } DAVID RUST, } H. V. CHAMBERLAIN, } ADDIN LEWIS, } _Committee._ DR. MAJOR, } EDWARD HALL, } PHILIP M’LOSKEY. }

Footnote 1:

Limits of the town—three miles in circumference.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.