USA > Tennessee > Shelby County > Memphis > A history of the yellow fever : the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, in Memphis, Tenn., embracing a complete list of the dead, the names of the doctors and nurses employed, names of all who contributed money or means, and the names and history of the Howards, together with other data, and lists of the dead elsewhere > Part 13
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A HISTORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER.
perhaps more. The death of Mrs. Bionda, an Italian snack-house keeper, was announced on the 14th as the first care originating in the city .* This increased the general fear. The little company of panie-tricken citizens was increased to a regiment, and in that ratio every hour until the next morning (the 15th), when the announcement of twenty-two new cases gave a fresh impetus to their dread, and, passing all bounds and limits of sen-e, thinking only of their personal safety, many of them indifferent to their fair. so they could get away from the now-admittedly-infected city, sought safety in flight. The announcement of thirty-three new cases on the 16th confirmed most of those who were willing to take their chances that an cpi- demic threatened, and a hegira ensued, which increased the feeling that in- spired it, until at last the whole population was precipitated into a panic, surpassing all powers of description, and which deadened all human sympa- thy, all the kindlier emotions of the human heart, all feeling of kinship, all regard for neighborly claims, and in some cases all natural affection. The croakers were jubilant. "I told you so!" was often repeated. Business was . almost as suddenly stopped as the fever began. Stores and offices were hastily closed. Sutre que pute was the order of the day. The future, which only a few short weeks before seemed so bright, was forgotten in dread of the pestilence, which. in the brief space of forty-eight hours had claimed fifty- five victims. Men, women, and children poured out of the city by every possible avenue of escape. A few steamboats were filled, but these were
# This is not true. It was ascertained, after the epidemic was fairly established, that many cases had occurred before her's. Mrs. C. W. Ferguson, boarding at the residence of Attorney-General G. P. M. Turner, 279 Second Street, states that on the 21st of July a colored man came up the river, whose wife was cook for Mr. Turner. This woman had a residence in the yard back of the Turner house, and abutting on an alley which runs from Second to Main Street. Her husband had been taken with a severe chill ou the boat on the morning of the day on which he landed, and when he reached his home had a very high fever for several days. For this his wife treated him with hot teas, and he recovered. Subsequently, and about ten days after his arrival. Mr. Turner's two children were taken with well-marked cases of yellow fever. One of them died, and the other recov- ered. In the meantime, a young man named Willie Darby, an employe of Farrell, the oyster-dealer, who lived at 277 Second Street, and who was in the habit of passing to his meals through the alley infected by the colored man, although he slept in the third story of his house, was taken with the fever, but recovered. He was nursed by his aunt, and was not visited by a doctor. His was the second case; it occurred on the 25th of July. The good woman who saved his life took the fever and died, as did nearly all who lived in the house or in the houses near by. Mrs. Zack (white), who re- sided on the opposite side of the street, died of the fever on the 5th of August. and her brother-in-law. taken on the 10th. died on the 13th, the day before Mrs. Bionda died. About the 1st of August. the steamer Golden Crown landed three ladies, who were taken to the residence of Esquire Winters, on Alabama Street, and among them the fever de- veloped, it was reported, about the 10th of August. All in this house but the 'Squire
were attacked, but recovered. Before this, Mr. John Campbell, whose house was oppo- site that of Mr. Winters, was taken sick, and died. it was reported at the time, of con- gestion, but afterward was proven to be yellow fever, as his wife and many other- were subsequently attacked in the same way, and developed well -defined cases of yellow fever.
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for the most part shunned, especially by those who had the means for railroad travel, and had mind sufficient left to think of the possi- bility of their becoming charnel-houses, subject to the quarantines and freaks of folly of populations equally scared and bent upon their own safety. Out by the country roads to the little hamlets and plantations, where many of them were welcome guests in happier days; out by every possi- ble conveyance -- by hacks, by carriages, buggies, wagons, furniture vans, and street drays ; away by batteaux, by any thing that could float on the river; and by the railroads, the trains on which, especially on the Louisville Road, were so packed as to make the trip to that city, or to Cincinnati, a positive torture to many delicate women every mile of the way. The aisles of the cars were filled, and the platforms packed. 4 In vain the railroad officials plead. in vain they increased the accommodations.
The stream of passengers seemed to be endless, and they seemed to be as mad as they were many. The ordinary courtesies of life were ignored ; politeness gave way to selfishness, and the de- . sire for personal safety broke through all the social amenities. If there was no positive indecency exhibited, there was a pushing, noisy, self-asserting, and frenzied rudeness, that was not abashed even in the presence of refined, delicate, and sensitive women. There was only one thought uppermost, and that was increased to an inexpresible terror. Men. refused admittance to the cars, took forcible possession of them, making such an exhibit of will, backed by arms, as deterred even the few policemen present from any interference. But with these there was more sympathy with than opposition to this rude re- bellion against routine, custom, order, and social law. If they made any ef- forts to prevent these assaults upon the rules and rights of the railroad companies, it was altogether by words, and not deeds. No arrests were made-not even when the windows of the cars were opened from the out- side, and men and boys were thrust in, over and despite the expostulations of the respectable women who occupied the seats. The cars of the trains for several days went out literally packed to suffocation with people. Every station and town had shortly its quota of refugees from Memphis, who, still inspired by the apprehensions which urged them to abandon their neighbors, and leave business and property to a possible fate they at no time dreamed of, spread the panie, some of them carrying with them the seeds of the disease which, with time and conditions to propagate, afterward brought to their hospitable and generous hosts the. misery and death which then plagued their relatives and friends. To the cities of the far north and the far west they fled, too many of them to die on the way, like dogs, neglected and shunned, as if cursed of God; or, to reach the wished-for goal, only to die, a plague to all about, carrying dismay to those who even then were busy- ing themselves for the relief of the stricken cities of the South. In less than ten days, by the 24th of August. twenty-five thousand people had left the city, and, in two weeks after, five thousand others were in camp, leaving a little less than twenty thousand to face consequences they could not escape. Some had walked away, having no means to pay for transportation, and, in Arkan- sas, many were forced to leave the trains and camp in the forest, unprepared
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as they were for a mode of living which not even the hardiest can encounter without risk to health and life. Shot-gun quarantines were by this time (the 26th of Angust) established at nearly all points in the interior, as well as upon the river; and, without leave, license, or law, trade was embargoed and travel prohibited. For the sake of humanity, men became inhuman. For the sake of saving those out of the fever's reach from its touch or taint, they denied a refuge to those who were fleeing from it. Law was everywhere suspended, but order was maintained. Even rogues for a time forgot their occupation, and the rash who were addicted to folly were sobered by the fear of the unseen fue by this time making itself felt where assurances were held out to the last, based upon the stupid zone theory, that it could neither find lodgment nor live.
II.
By the last week in August the panic was over in the city. All had fled who could, and all were in camp who would go. There was then, it was esti- inated, about three thousand cases of fever. Most of the white men who were not in bed, and who were to be met upon the streets, were engaged in the work of relief, citber as physicians, nurses, as Howard visitors, or as members of the other organizations which did such noble service: The weather continued in- tensely hot and dry. During this month (August). it averaged 82.2º as com- pared with 79° for the same month in 1873. In September, it averaged 72º as compared with 71° in the same month in 1873. In October, 60.8º as compared with 56° in the same month in 1873, and in November, 57.8º as compared with 49° in the same month in 1873 .* The drain of the physical energies, induced by this long-continued heat, was as fearful as the strain on the mind and heart, induced by the destruction of the fever. From either there was neither re-
Dr. Schenck, of St. Louis, insists that yellow fever is a disease of the tropics, and occurs during July, August, and September. Exceptions to this have occurred in the West Indies, where they had a severe epidemic in February. Dr. La Roche states that during July Philadelphia has had seven epidemies to commence. New Orleans ( from 1817 to 1853), fourteen ; New York, three ; Boston, two. During the month of Angust Philadelphia had three ; Charleston, six ; New York, two ; Providence, Rhode Island, two. Yellow fever being a disease of the tropics, it requires a high temperature; it never spreads where the thermometer stands at less than 72º Fahrenheit. It has been proven in Philadelphia, in a series of years embracing many epidemies, that it occurred in no year when the average thermometer at 3 o clock p. M. was under 79º during the summer, and that the extent and malignancy of the disease were proportionate to the extent in which it exceeded that height, and that the average temperature of June and July, at that hour, governs the season in relation to health, insomuch that if by the first oi August in any year the average shall be below that degree, they feel confident that during that season yellow fever will not ovenr. Dr. Barton says that in every instance in yellow fever epidemics in New Orleans great heat was the predominant condition : and it was remarked that the return of the intense heat reproduesd the fever two or three times. In the months of May and June preceding the epidemics at New Orleans,
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lease nor relief. An appalling gloom hung over the doomed city. At night, it was silent as the grave, by day, it seemed desolate as the desert. There were hours, especially at night, when the solemn oppressions of universal death bore upon the human mind, as if the day of judgment was about to dawn. Not a sound was to be heard ; the silence was painfully profound. Death prevailed everywhere. Trade and traffic were suspended. The energies of all who re- mained were enlisted in the struggle with death. The poor were reduced to . beggary, and even the rich gladly accepted alms. At midday a noisy multi- tude of negroes broke in upon the awful monotony of death, the dying, and the dead, clamoring each for his dole of the bounty which saved the city from plunder and the torch. When these had gone to their homes, now fast being . invaded by the fever, the cloud of gloom closed down again and settled, thick, black, and hideous, upon every living soul. Even the animals felt the op- pression ; they fled from the city. Rats, cats, or dogs were not to be seen. Death was triumphant. White women were seldom to be met ; children, never. The voice of prayer was lifted up only at the bed of pain or death, or in some home circle where anguish was supreme and death threatened, as in a few cases he accomplished total annihilation. Tears for one loved one were choked back by the feeling of uncertainty provoked by the sad condition of another. In one case a family of four was found dead in the same room, the bodies par- tially decomposed. There were no public evidences of sorrow. The wife was borne to the tomb while the husband was unconscions of his loss ; and whole families were swept away in such quick succession that not one had knowledge of the other's departure. Death dealt kindly by these. In a week father, mother, and sisters and brother's were at rest, at peace. There was no mourn- ing ; no widow, no orphans. The parents went first ; in a few hours the chil- dreu followed. In some cases one of the parents was left dazed, stunned, in a condition beyond tears and bordering on insanity.' In one such case, a mother, thus left, turned from her grief's with a brave heart, sustained by a holy trust, to nurse the sick. Her losses and trials deepened her sympathies and enabled her to appreciate the disheartened, almost demented, condition of those yet in the valley of the shad ww, through which she had passed. She entered the siek- room with all the confidence of a martyr and dispensed the holy and comfort- ing assurances of a saint. There was almost healing in her touch. A man also, thus bereft, who, in one short week, buried all his pets, who rose from a sick-bed to lay his wife away forever, also became a nurse, and for weeks, un-
the average temperature at midday was 83.75°. In Brazil and Demarara it is noticed that whenever the disease varied or changed, it was usnally preceded by variation of temperature. Though Dr. Parks states that the observations at Lisbon . in 1957), mnade by Dr. Lyons, shows that there is no relation to the dew point in an epidemic of yellow ever, yet the experiments in the South show that the dew point of yellow fever is 70? to 80°; the disease rarely exists when it is under 60º .. It is a common phrase to call the clear days of the season of the disease "yellow fever weather ; " they are characterized by being very hot in the sun ifhd cool in the shade, such days as when you are burning on one side of the street and on the other side you feel an inclination to button up your coat. During the worst periods of the epidemic at Galveston in 1867, the most frequent wind was from the east; still more remarkable was the frequency and long duration of calms.
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til the epidemie closed, went about doing good. Another woman heroically nursed and buried her husband and three children, and then lay down-a walking case-and, as she said, gladly welcomed death. Others, as sadly be- reft, vainly prayed for death to release them from sorrows that could not be assuaged. Sadder cases than these were the orphans, who lost both parents, children who were dropped from comfort into poverty and robbed in a tev hours of the care, protection, and guidance of loving parents, to become a pul,- lie charge and the inmates of publie asylums. A time came when the care of these little ones was as great an anxiety to the few who were left to manage affairs as the burial of the dead. The asylums were already full, and their iu- mates were bearing their share of the awful burden of death. The people of Nashville kindly and generously volunteered their aid. They took the chil- dren, and the relieved citizens turned their attention to the unburied bodies that were emitting the most noisome stenches, death-breeding and death-dealing. Some of these were found in a state little better than a lot of bones in a pud- dle of green water. Two bodies were found on a leading street in so ad- vanced a stage of decomposition that they were rolled in the carpets on which they had fallen in the agonies of dissolution and were lifted into boxes, in which they were hurried to the potter's field and buried. Half the putrid re- mains of a negro woman were found in an outbuilding near the Appeal office ; the other half had been eaten by rats, that were found dead by hundreds near by. A young gentleman, well known as a merchant, died in his room alone, after, it is supposed, a forty-eight hours' illness, and was only traced by the gases from his body, which was found so far advanced in putrefaction that it was with difficulty any one could be found to bury it. More than sixty unburied bodies were found by the burial corps, hastily organized by the Citizens' Relief Com- mittee. Many of these were put away in the trenches where the paupers and the unknown sleep peacefully together. The carnival of death was now at its height. Women were found dead, their little babes gasping in the throes of death be- side the breasts at which they had tugged in vain. One case is recalled where the babe was literally glued to the bosom, where it had found food and shelter, and perhaps expired at the same moment as the mother, whose love was evi- denced even in a death embrace. Others passed away after the labors of birth had supervened upon the fever-mother and child being buried in the same grave. The penalties of maternity, which always command the tenderest solici- tude and sympathy, were paid in nameless agonies, leading in all but two cases to forfeiture of life. No words can convey an idea of the peculiar sutterings to which women were subjected; some who had passed safely into the vigor of old age, were again taxed with functions long since silenced, and in the moment of death, and even after it, this curse of the sex asserted itself to an amazing and an astonishing degree. Not a few were affected with swellings that took on the form of goitre, increasing the disgusting consequences of a disease that to the patient is one of the most offensive-as much so as small-pox, or the black plague of the East. Its effects upon men were equally forbidding. It was no respecter of persons; good and bad went down together, but those whose physical sy-tem had been impaired by diseases which are a special pen- 8
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alty of lecherous excesses, died soonest. Peculiarly a disease of the nervous system, it was fatal to those whose energies had been exhausted by debauchery. But neither cleanliness nor right living were a shield to stay the hand of this destroyer. He invaded the homes of the most chaste, and the den of the vilest. He took innocence and infamy at the same moment, and spread terror every- where. Where sorrow was so general there could be no parade of it. There were no funerals, and but few demands for funeral services. The luxuries of woe were dispensed with. In most cases the driver of the hearse and an assist- ant comprised the funeral party. Not unfrequently many bodies were left in the cemetery unburied for a night, so hard pressed were the managers for labor, and so numerous the demands upon what they had. The bell at the grave-yard gate was for a long time tolled by a lovely girl, who for weeks was her father's ouly help. She kept the registry of the dead, and knew what the havee of the fever was; yet she remained at her self-selected post, her father's coura- geous clerk, until sickness conquered her physical energies; but she recovered, and after a few days resumed her place, keeping tally until the plagne itself was numbered with the things that were. No bell save that of death was tolled. The churches were closed. The congregations were dispersed. The members were far apart. Some were safe, many were dead. Only a few survived, and these were manifesting their faith by works. The police* were cut down from forty-one to seven. Their ranks were recruited. and again were thinned. They were a second and a third time filled up, and yet death was relentless. He was jealous of all sway but his own. The fire departmenti was cut down to thirteen. One by one they fell, dying at their posts; yet those who remained were always ready, with their com- rades of the police force, to protect and save the lives and property of their fellow-citizens. Their bells, too, were silenced out of tender regard for the sick -- so changed do rugged and even rough men become in the presence of an overwhelming and incomprehensible calamity. Their hearts went out in sym- pathy to all alike. The city was to them as one house, and all the stricken inmates of one family, to which they themselves belonged. They were pervaded by the spirit of the Howards, of the Citizens' Relief Committee, and of all the organizations for the relief and succor of living or dead-the spirit of charity. Fortunately there were but few fires, and these made no great demand upon the exertions of the department. But petty thieving prevailed as an epidemic. This was, however, principally confined to food and clothing, and wood or coal,
* Of the Police Department, twenty-seven out of a total of forty-eight men were attacked, of whom ten died and seventeen convalesced. The dead are as follows: Cap- tain William Homan, Sergeant James McConnell, and Patrolmen James McConnell. William Unversagt, I. J. Huber. W. H. Sweeney, M. Cannon, M. M. Allison, Fred. Restmeyer, and Tim Hope.
t The following named members of the fire department died : Capt. P. Haley. Jno. Considine, Patrick Cronin, J. R. Luccarnia. Thomas Brennan, Felix Plaggio, Denms Sullivan, Michael Fenny, Martin Carney, Michael Farrell, Tony Griffin, Jno. Le-ch. Patrick Connell, B. Lunch, Frank Saliglamachia, Frank Frank, Jno. Heath. C. E. Riorden, James Hannon, Austin Beatty, Sam'l Town-end, Edward Moran, Edward Lec, Thomas Heath.
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or both. A few who came to nurse died, leaving full trunks of silverware, bijoutere, bric-a-brac, and clothes, to prove how industriously they could ply two trades, and make one cover up and make up for the deficiencies of the other. A few, also, of them made themselves. notorious for lewdness and drunkenuess. To these many deaths are due. They shocked decency and out- raged humanity. They were no better than the beasts of the field. Male and female, they herded together in vileness. They made of the epidemic a carni- val. It was the one opportunity they had been looking for above all others. But the worst of them were cut short in their career; only one or two escaped. Many were sent whence they came; many others, a majority of them, died. They were taken in the midst of their transgressions. One of these, a woman, who could not, or would not, control her appetite for strong drink, while stupefied from wine and brandy, allowed a poor woman to leave her bed, naked as when born, and wander out into the country on an inclement night, calling as she went, for the husband who had preceded her to the grave by a few days. Two others, men, were found helplessly drunk, lying halt-naked upon the floor, beside the dead body of the patient, whom the attending physicians said ought to have recov- ered. In the house of an ex-judge, whence a whole family had been borne to the grave, the victims of neglect, four such nurses died, and in the two trunks of one- and the worst of them, a woman of seeming refinement-there was found the fam- ily plate and wearing apparel of the judge's wife, then absent in Ohio. This woman and her paramours fell victims to the fever which they invited by their debauch- In the whole range of human depravity
ery, and hastened by their excesses.
there are few parallels to these cases. They illustrate the extremes of degrada-
tion; they sounded the lowest depths of vice, and shamed even the low standards of savage life. At a time when the hearts of nearly all were filled with sorrow and weighed with care, a few like these indulged in orgies that were an extreme contrast to the prevalent solemnity and sadness; they gave way to the vilest and most brutal of human weaknesses, and surrendered them- selves to a shamelessness that at any time would horrify decency. It was delib- erate lechery. There was nothing in the surroundings, or in the life, which was hurried forward with such rapidity to death, to prompt or encourage lewdness ; on the contrary, there was every thing to forbid and repel it. Those, therefore, who gave themselves to it, did so in obedience to a propensity deliberately nursed, any, the faintest, expression of which makes one shudder, even at this distance of time, to contemplate. Out of these cases of excess grew a statement of whole- sale rape of white women by negro male nurses. No charge ever made was so
baseless, so wanton, so cruel, so unjust. This class of the population, whatever they may have been to each other-and not a few of them were inexcusably neg- lectful, and even brutally indifferent to each other's wants and woes-were defer- ential and respectful to the white race, and as soldiers, policemen, and nurses were earnest, honest, and devoted .* . Not even one of them attempted a crime that
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