Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1897 — FEVER IN THE SOUTH. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FEVER IN THE SOUTH.

PESTILENCE SEEMS TO BE WELL IN HAND. Cool Weather Favorable to th* ftlnfected Districta-One Tariff Bill Section I* Dead- Statement by Ratchford on the Strike—Hawaii for Annexation la of a Mild Type. The yellow fever scourge cannot be ■aid to be spreading, but it clings tenaciously when it once gets a foothold. Eighteen new cases were reported at New Orleans, but all are of a mild type. The cases at New Orleans now number 52, which is Very few among a population of 280,000. The deaths continue to show an extraordinary small percentage, only five deaths having occurred among 52 patients. Of course there is enough fever in New Orleans to arouse apprehension there and to continue the dismay in other portions of the South. At Mobile the disease is quite ugly, 11 new cases being reported on Saturday, 11 on Sunday, but only 2 on Monday because the weather has taken a favorable turn. The cold wave in the Northwest seems to have spread its disinfecting wings over that city. There are no new cases at Ocean Springs, but the distress of the inhabitants in that little burg is sore. The town is so strictly quarantined that both food and medicine are very scarce. Cairo is recovering from its alarm. All the local physicians stoutly declare that the two cases at the marine hospital are not yellow fever, but a type of sharp malarial fever so common in the autumn among those who live upon the southwestern rivers. This opinion, if confirmed by subsequent events, will knock out Dr. Guiteras of Pennsylvania, whom the government had employed at heavy expense as the greatest yellow fever expert in the United States. Dr. Guiteras is not the first expert who has found himself minus by subsequent developments. Nevertheless Cairo will omit no precautions against the yellow fever, and therefore it has quarantined against Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. The South expects to wait for the first frost before the yellow fever is thoroughly stamped out, but it is hardly probable that a sharp frost will be felt below the Tennessee line before the last of November. The postoffice department is in a quandary. Many of the towns in the Gulf States have quarantined against all mail matter, even after it has been fumigated. This shows the condition of alarm which prevails in many sections of the South. Now and then an incident is published which tends to show that the yellow fever can be

communicated through the mail. It is related that a person in Mobile received a letter from a friend in Ocean Springs. The letter was written in a room where a yellow fever patient was in bed, and the person who received the letter was attacked by the fever. All these facts are not authenticated, but their publication widens the dismay and tends to make the people believe that the yellow fever town should be treated as the outcasts of the ”Wsfld. According to the statements of a physician who had experience in the plague of 1878, when from ninety to 100 persons died every day for months, the fever is in itself not nearly so dangerous as the panic which accompanies it. If the people wo aid not become overcome by fear more of them would be saved. He says that probably 10 per cent, of all those who have the disease are likely to succumb to the fever itself, but when the plague is accompanied with excitement and panic the death rate runs up to 30 or 40 per cent, of all those who show the symptoms at all. When people have become inured to the scenes of the disease and death and can look upon them without a feeling of panic or unusual excitement, the greater part of the danger passes away, and so it is that after any community has experienced disease for a short time the ravages are abated. If, when the first symptoms appear, the patient is given a hot foot bath and a strong dose of castor oil and put to bed where he can sweat out the poison, the great chances are that he will recover within a short time. The disease is at its height nine days after the first symptoms appear. The presence of yellow jack Ln New Orleans and the consequent quarantine is killing the business of that city now. This is just the season of the whole year when the shipping trade is at its height and the precautions of the health department will be a crushing blow to the interests of the merchants.

UNITED STATES MARINE HOSPITAL AT NEW ORLEANS.