Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1919 — PLAGUE MADE DIRE RECORD [ARTICLE]

PLAGUE MADE DIRE RECORD

Reasonable Grounds for Estimating That Influenza Has Cost the Lives of Six Million Persons. Though estimates of dehths over th* whole world from any single epidemH are very difficult to form, there seen to be reasonable grounds for believing that some 6.000.000 persons have perished of Influenza and pneumonia dur Ing the last comparatively few weeku Business has been Interfered with fr» the epidemic In every country In thi world, and enormous losses both It earning power and in trade have beer suffered. The cost of the “Inflnenzr war” cannot be reckoned, but that it h colossal does not admit of doubt. This plague, then, generally regardec with equanimity. Is. It would seem, flvt times more deadly than war. It hat been estimated that the war caused th« death of 20,000,000 persons in four and one-half years, writes a physician Io the London Time*. In the same period at Its epidemic rate Influenza would have killed 108.000.IMM). The visits of the raiding Gothas to London were but as a summer shower compared with the deluge of germs which we have Just received. The ait raids cost London, some hundreds of lives; the Influenza has cost it upwards of 10.000. Never since the black death has such a plague swept over the face of the world: never, perhaps; has a plague been more stoically accepted. In India alone over 3.000.000 deaths occurred. Bombay had 15.000 of these; Delhi, with a population of 200,000, had 800 deaths a day. The Punjab lost 250.000,persons. South .Africa suffered no less severely. In Cape Town 2,000 children were left destitute as a result of the disease, while the plague swept through the native areas like fire. The commonwealth of Australia sent a ship to Samoa with help because the disease was affecting 80 per cent of the natives. The white population were only able to feed the living and bury the dead. In New Zealand public services were stopped and business gravely disorganized. The ravages in America have been appalling, nor has Canada escaped. In Ontario and the western provinces no than 108 doctors died of the epidemic, while the total death rate in Ontario alone was 5.000 up to November. A large number of American Indians have perished. Europe as a whole has suffered in the same way. In Spain the epidemic was described as “truly • awful.” In Barcelona the death rate . was credibly stated to be 1.200 daily. France has had her share, likewise Germany and Austria. ‘ ' '•