Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 71, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1910 — WIPED OUT BY SMALLPOX [ARTICLE]

WIPED OUT BY SMALLPOX

Only One Survivor in a Russian Vlllage of 1,100 Inhabitants. Details of the wiping out of an entire Russian village by smallpox have just reached St. Petersburg, says a New York Press correspondent. The village is named Volskaya, and is situated in the Island of Sachalin. Until a few weeks ago Its population was 1,100. Sanitation, as la most Russian villages, was conspicuously absent, and when the disease first appeared a few months ago no one wan troubled about it. Smallpox In Russia is frequently called the "holy sickness,” and no attempt was made at vaccination. Sick and healthy children were habitually bathed together, that being: believed an efficacious treatment, and after the local priest died the bodies remained unburled. Thus the epidemic /aged unchecked and entire families, from grandfather to grandchild, were stricken. , Finally a sanitary commission was sent from the mainland, but could accomplish nothing. It has been decided to burn to the ground this “village of death,” as it Is popularly called. Of the 1,100 inhabitants only one remains, a man of 72, named Vasßilleff. The disease spared him, but he has become a maniac.