People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — WORSE THAN CHOLERA. [ARTICLE]

WORSE THAN CHOLERA.

Disease Among Arkansas Convicts Is Declared More Swiftly Fatal. DALLAS, Tex , Jan. 3.—Mr. H. Pettibone, of Little Rock, Ark., is in the city. In reference to the reported existence of cholera among the convicts in the penitentiary of that city he says the disease has the symptoms of cholera but is more swiftly fatal than Asiatic cholera. It first appeared among a detachment of convicts at work cleaning out a sewer on the Iron Mountain road. The uncovering of the sewer liberated a gas which, it seems, generated the disease. Eight convicts at work in the sewer died, five of them half an hour after they were stricken down. From this sewer the disease was conveyed to the penitentiary. Mr. Pettibone thinks the suddenness of the deaths disposes of the theory that the disease is due to bad sanitary condition of the penitentiary. He says the question is whether cholera generated in the United States will spread like that resulting from an imported germ. The disease has caused something like a panic in Little Rock.