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TABLE NO. 2.-Statement of the total number of vessels, American and foreign, which entered each of the various (26) ports of the United States from all the ports of Cuba, during the year ending June 30, 1878.

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It is noteworthy that of all the vessels cleared from Cuba to the United States fourfifths entered the six ports of New York, Key West, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, and Baltimore-more than two-fifths of these having entered the port of New York alone, and less than two-fifths the remaining five ports combined-and that only 571 of the 2,236 vessels sailed to the eighteen southern ports which are south of Nor folk, Va., and especially liable to yellow fever.

Although Spain, the mother country, imposes from May 1 to October 1 severe quarantine restrictions on vessels from all Cuban ports, whether with or without clean bills of health, yet these ports are not all equally prone to infect the shipping in their harbors; and vessels which do become infected are not dangerous in equal degree to all the ports of the United States. Hence, it is of consequence to determine the comparative amount of intercourse from each Cuban port to each port in the United States. The desired facts as to foreign as well as to American vessels were not procured; but the following data as to American vessels alone, and for the year ending December 31, instead of June 30, 1878, as in table No. 2, furnish facts sufficient for a satisfactory estimate. Since the data are derived from the same sources which supplied the materials of table No. 1, they are defective to the same slight extent, and for the same reasons, which were stated when introducing said table.

TABLE NO. 3.-Total number of American vessels cleared from all and from each of ten Cuban ports for United States during the year ending December 31, 1878.

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While this table correctly represents the comparative intercourse from the specified Cuban ports to the ports of the United States, it must not be forgotten that it inadequately represents the absolute amount of said intercourse, because it fails not only to report the fifty to seventy-five vessels which sail annually from five omitted ports, but also to report the seven hundred to eight hundred foreign vessels which also sail to the United States. In another particular, still more important, the table is calculated to mislead in any estimate of the number of dangerous risks incurred by the United States from any one of these ports when infected; for a number of vessels sail from each of the chief and most dangerous ports coastwise, and are reported in the table as sailing from its last port of departure, perhaps an uninfected one, without reference to the fact that it had previously been at a dangerously infected port. Some idea of the number of such risks may be derived from the following facts: From that most dangerous port Havana there sailed in 1878, directly to the United States, five hundred and three American vessels, as is correctly stated in the table, but in addition to this number there were one hundred and seventy-six other vessels which sailed coastwise from Havana; that is, to some other Cuban port. And these one hundred and seventysix vessels are reported as cleared from their final port of departure, and not from Havana.

Medical records are full of instances where vessels, sailing from some other Cuban port, had become infected really at Havana. During the present year, two vessels at Matanzas were reported to have become infected at Havana, and one vessel entering Philadelphia from Sagua is reported to have become infected at Matanzas.

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2.-DURING WHAT SEASONS OF THE YEAR IS THE INTERCOURSE FROM CUBAN PORT THE UNITED STATES GREATEST AND LEAST.

Of the 1,648 American vessels which sailed from the ten ports of Cuba during year ending December 31, 1878, the number which sailed during each of the quarters of the year was as follows:

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During the year 1877 the corresponding figures were as follows: Of 1,454 Americ vessels 414 sailed during the first quarter, 548 during the second, 264 during the thi and 228 during the fourth quarter. It thus appears that a larger number of vess sail from Cuba to the United States during the six months, April to October, th during the six months from October to April. It deserves notice that the larg amount of intercourse with Cuba occurs during the second quarter of the year, 1 that positive information was received that this excess occurred more especially duri the months of April and May, and not usually in June. Since the four months Ju July, August, and September are especially to be feared, and since it is during t period that the greatest conflict occurs between sanitary and commercial interests, was deemed important to determine what proportion of our trade was carried on duri these months. It is regretted that the desired data were not obtained except for t ports of Matanzas and Cardenas, but no reason is known why the facts as to these ty should not correctly indicate the facts as to the other ports. The facts as to Matanz and Cardenas are as follows:

TABLE NO. 5.-Statement, for five years, of the number of vessels of all nationalities whi cleared annually for the United States from the ports of Matanzas and Cardenas during t four months June to September, and during the whole year.

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Thus it is seen that considerably less than one-fourth of all the vessels which sail t the United States from Matanzas and Cardenas habitually sail during the four months June to September.

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3. WHAT IS THE VALUE TO THE UNITED STATES OF THE INTERCOURSE WITH THE PORTS OF CUBA?

The day may come when the people of the United States will demand whether their welfare would not be best promoted by suspension of intercourse with Cuba during certain months of the year; the day has come when this intercourse is much restricted; and the day is always at hand when an intelligent people should be instructed to what extent their pecuniary as well as their sanitary progress is involved in every legislative measure. Commercial interests are so much prized, sanitary interests so ill-appreciated, that vague and absurdly exaggerated statements of the value of the Cuban trade find credence.

In January, 1879, an intelligent but interested witness testified before a com mittee of distinguished Congressmen and of medical experts engaged in the investigation of the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, that the sanitary restrictions on the trade of New Orleans with the West Indies had, during this one year, injured that city to the extent of about one hundred millions of dollars. It is instructive that this evidence passed unquestioned in spite of the fact that the total annual exports of Cuba to all nations has rarely if ever exceeded that sum.

The most complete and reliable data in hand are for the year ending June 30, 1878, and some few of these data are submitted with the warning that all the figures for this year are somewhat less than the usual annual averages of recent years, owing to the less productiveness of this year.

The total exports of Cuba in 1878 were $70,881,552, and of this sum there were $56,695,278 of saccharine products and $13,213,690 of tobacco.

The United States took from Cuba $58,885,162 of its exports (or deducting "specie," $56,901,332 of Cuban products), and exported to Cuba, exclusive of "coin and bullion," $11,365,013 "merchandise." Thus the total trade with Cuba in 1878, not the profits on this trade, which must necessarily have been very much less, consisted in the interchange of products and merchandise of which the total value was only $70,250,125, while the annual average for the past ten years has not been more than about $80,000,000. This trade, in 1878, was distributed as follows:

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The insignificant remainder ($486,862) of this trade was transacted with the ten southern ports which follow in the order of their relative importance: Pearl River (68,667), Mobile, Galveston, Savannah, Wilmington, Charleston, Brunswick, Saint Marks, Fernandina, and Brazos, ($10,056).

So many intricate problems enter into the calculation of the profits derived from commerce that even commercial experts would find it difficult to estimate the value to this country of its trade with Cuba, and still more difficult to estimate the much smaller profits which would be lost to the United States by a suspension of or by restrictions on this trade during a few months of each year.

None the less, the facts given seem to justify the following concusions: The United States is an indispensable market to Cuba. Suspension of intercourse during a few months would tend to force the Cuban trade into the remaining months of the year rather than to seriously diminish this trade. The chief injury to the interests of the United States would fall upon the shipping and sailors temporarily deprived of occupation, and finally, present sanitary restrictions on this trade certainly do not cause to the United States the great pecuniary loss which the people are incessantly taught is thereby inflicted.

II.

ENDEMICITY OF YELLOW FEVER IN CUBA.

The vagueness of significance attached to the words endemic and epidemic, whether as defined by medical lexicographers or by common use, renders these words so unsatisfactory that whoever would write with accuracy is forced to explain. As usually

defined, an endemic disease is due to a local cause, and is peculiar to certain localities or countries wherein it prevails habitually; but this habitual prevalence need not be persistent throughout every month of the year, nor even during every year. Thus this word ranges through undefined limits, so that when an endemic prevails with great severity custom permits it to be termed either an epidemic or an endemo-epidemic. A greater objection to the word is found in defining it to be "due to local cause." What is due? Is it the origin or the propagation of a disease by local causes which entitles it to be classed as an endemic? While all admit that the local causes have much to do with the propagation of yellow fever, it is very doubtful whether this disease has its origin any more in such causes than have the eggs of a tape-worm, the achorion of the barber's itch, or the virus of small-pox, or syphilis. Just as sugar-cane is propagated only when under the influence of certain local causes, but can never be originated by them, so many hold as to the origin and propagation of yellow fever. Hence, the word endemic will not be used to imply that either this or any other disease which there may be occasion to thus designate owes its origin necessarily to local causes. In reference to the endemicity of yellow fever in Cuba, its history, extent, and causes in many different localities thereof, so vast a mass of valuable statistical and other facts has been gathered that it is impossible to condense these into a brief preliminary report, and the difficulty of properly treating the subject is greatly increased by the fact that so much time was engrossed in collecting these facts that very little has been left for their thorough study and proper mental digestion. As this holds, in some measure, true in reference to all of the special subjects investigated, generalities, rather than details, must be permitted.

The endemicity of yellow fever is so intimately associated with its first appearance, its history, and its causation that a few facts must be presented, not only on the history of yellow fever in Cuba, but also on the history of this disease prior to the year 1761, when it first appeared in Havana,* so far as its first distinct recognition and authentic record go to establish this first appearance.

The history of yellow fever prior to 1761 requires to be divided, for present purposes, into two epochs: first, from the discovery of America in 1492 to 1640, and, second, from 1640 to 1761. A third epoch, from 1771 to 1780, will be subsequently considered in relation exclusively to Cuba. Those familiar with the history of general literature, and especially of medical science from 1492 to the present day, need not be reminded through what an abyss of illiteracy, medical ignorauce, and quackery civilized nations have slowly progressed to the present day; and that only in recent times have there been ample means to publish, and any considerable number of medical men competent to observe and to record what was worthy of publication. Hence none should be surprised that, though the records of yellow fever are superabundant in modern times, these records should become less and less satisfactory until, as we pass backwards, we reach an epoch, as is that from 1492 to 1640, of vague allusions and inconclusive descriptions-therefore an epoch open to suspicion and hypothesis.

1492 to 1640.-Historical records justify the suspicion that yellow fever prevailed in San Domingo in 1493-1494 and subsequent years, in Port Rico as early as 1508, in Darien in 1514, in Guadaloupe in 1635, &c. Knowledge of nature's laws, of disease, of yellow fever particularly, and of other subjects relating to the present topic, convert the suspicion justified by scanty historical records into an absolute conviction that yellow fever was at least coeval in some of the West Indies with their first settlement by Europeans.

1640 to 1761.-Nothwithstanding this conviction the earliest authentic historical notices of unquestionable yellow fever are those which record epidemics of this disease at Guadaloupe in 1640, Martinique in 1641, and Barbadoes in 1647. Memoranda are in hand which indicate the prevalence of yellow fever from 1640 to its first recorded appearance in Havana in 1761, in not less than thirty different places, more than one hundred times; and among these in not less than ten different places nearly fifty different times in these United States.

YELLOW FEVER IN HAVANA AND CUBA, FROM 1761 TO 1880.

The year 1762 was a notable one to Havana, since it was besieged, captured, and held by an English force of some thirty thousand soldiers and sailors for more than a year. In that year a yellow-fever epidemic committed destructive ravages, and it is not singular that many historians should have committed the apparantly inconsequent error of stating that the disease first appeared in this notable year. However, ample historical proofs have been secured to establish that the first epidemic occurred in 1761, and the second in 1762.

Although the disease made its first historical appearance in 1761, yet there are historical allusions sufficient to justify strong belief that yellow fever had existed in Havana and Cuba in four of the eight years 1648 to 1655. However, in view of this suspicion, it deserves notice that, though Spanish literature is unusually rich in valu*Havana was founded in 1515-1519; had a populalion in 1600 of about 3,000, in 1700 about 9,000, and in 1792 about 50,000.

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