Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1878 — Curiosities of Yellow Fever. [ARTICLE]

Curiosities of Yellow Fever.

[From the Boston Journal.] * Yellow fever is a mysterious, and, in many respects, an incomprehensible disease. The few general facts that seem to have been learned about it, after close and varied observation, are not infrequently contradicted by new experience. One of its widely-supposed peculiarities is that it cannot live at certain elevations, 2,500 feet above sea level being sufficient, it is thought, to exclude it completely. Yet, long before Cortez invaded Mexico, the natives of the country suffered terribly from an epidemic which was, beyond all rational doubt, identical with what is now known as yellow fever. This epidemic—it was called matlazahuatl— prevailed repeatedly, with great virulence and mortality, during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, on the table lands of Mexico, 7,200 to 7,800 feet above the sea. If it has raged at that height it may rage at an equal height agajn, and thus the favorite and now universally-accepted theory is overthrown. It is surprising how very little is known of the yellow fever, as to its symptoms, consequences, general course and treatment, for, while it has been recognized only about 200 years as a distinctive disease, it has. been a fearful scourge at least since the beginning of the fifteenth century. It used to be called the plague, and it is little less hideous and destructive than that frightful pesti-

lence, now happily confined to the hot and filthy East Although yellow fever is regarded as a very fatal disease, a great many people do recover from it, and where there is recovery it is usually complete, and the patient is not, as too often happens in the case of <hose suffering from other fevers, an ailing man afterwards. An old surgeon in the United States navy, who haul on more than one occasion to fight this dreadful malady, tells of a remarkable recovery which came under his notice. Accommodations being very limited on board a fever-stricken ship, he desired that a patient whose condition seemed quite hopeless should be laid in one of the boats which hung from the divats. The man had sunk •into insensibility, and, attention, being urgently demanded for cases less desperate, he was left during the night to his fate. Meanwhile, a terrible thunderstorm, with a deluge of rain, came on, which latter fell upon the patient in the boat like a tremendous shower-bath. When they went to look at him next morning he had come to his senses, was wonderfully better, and from that hour began to recover.