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 4
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* The years marked (#) are those in which the fever was declared epidemic.
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A HISTORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER.
tivity. That although vitiated or infectious air may be conveyed in goods and in various ways to distant places, ventilation speedily dissipates it; and that if disease results, where it is much concentrated, or with very susceptible in- dividuals, it extends no farther, except under the conditions above specified .* But further than this, the commission -- after most careful scrutiny into the actual occurrences of the first irruption of the fever, its spread, the character of its localization, the persons most liable and suffering, from whatever class and country-have converted presumptive proof into positive certainty. that the fever originated with us; that its fatal malignity and spread were justly attributable to a very remarkable concurrence and combination of atmos- pheric and terrine causes, always particularly fatal to human health and life." Dowler strengthens this indigenous theory hy the citation of another instance of epidemie yellow fever which could not otherwise he accounted for. It occurred in 1797, at New Design, a small town fifteen miles from the Mississippi River and twenty from St. Louis. It carried off one-fourth of the inhabitants. Not even one person had visited the place from places where the fever prevailed. Still another instance is furnished by the same distinguished author. He says
# Dr. Drake, of Nashville, at a meeting of the Davidson County Medical Society, on the 15th of March, of this year, 1879. in a speech worthy of the subject and of the dis- tingnished body before which it was made, sustains the position taken by the New Orleans Commission of 1833, and fortifies it by facts as follows: "The testimony of Dr. Wilkes and others suggest some very important deductions. Dr. Webb returned from Memphis [in 1878] to his home carrying the germs of yellow fever about his clothing. His wife and chil- dren took the disease and died, and yet he escaped. How was this ? His duties kept him in the open air, more or less, while the female inmates of his family were more or less confined to the house, where the germs found a lodgment from his cast-off clothing. In this room the poison evidently existed in the greatest quantity ; and the constant oc- cupants were the first to suffer. At Jackson, a gentleman who had been to Memphis [197>] hang up his clothes in a wardrobe, the weather being warm. After several days his wife opened the door and took the garments out. We would suppose that in a close, hot room the poison would multiply itself in this time until the air would be heavy with it; and so it seemed in this case, for the lady took the yellow fever and died, followed in due time by the rest of the family. Why was not the importer of the disease the first to take it ? He had the germs with him most certainly. Evidently, the poisoned atmosphere around him while en route was too much diluted by fresh air to affect him beyond his powers of ordinary resistance. The inmates of his house were differently sitnated ; con- fined in-doors, they breathed the poisoned atmosphere generated in unwholesome quanti- ties, and so were the first victims, while his habits led him ont into the open air, and he only took the disease when he was confined at home ministoring to the sick. Again: the inhabitants of the tents in the neighborhood of Memphis principally escaped for the same reason, namely, that they were not exposed to an atmosphere sufficiently charged with the poison to produce morbifie effects. This seems to be the only solution; for. if the active malific canse was general in its operations-atmo-pheric, and not -pecific-then those people would surely have suffered and died as they did at the city a few milt- away. So it seems, from all this, that the danger from yellow fever grows in proportion to the stagnation and confinement of the air in a given quarter. Infected rooms become dangerou- in proportion to the want of ventilation; and cellars, for obvious reasons, would be charged to saturation. The holils of vessels and the apartments of freight cars would become particularly dangerous."
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A HISTORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER.
that early in the summer of 1800, "the :hen Intendant of Cuba, El Sr. Daa Pablo Valiente, chartered the ship Dolphin to take himself. family, and -uite to spain, touched at Charleston, aud. having anchored in the Day of Cadiz. Le went ashere with bi- party two days after. on the Pth of July. A mu utb kiter the yellow fever appeared in Cadiz; wh- roupa Valiente was arrested min a criminal charge, for having importel yellow fever contagion from Havana and! Charleston. The firmaer be 1. it in May, the latter Le touched at on Jons 24. and leit eight days after. At neither place was there any yellow fever. N yellow fever appeared on board of the Indian during the savage, though three of the -allors had died. The Intendant, after eleven months ingris mment. was acquitted at Seville, and wa- afterwards promoted by the _ werumwelt. probably as a compensation for his wrongs." Another case is that if the vis itation in Philadelphia. in 1:53, which was attributed to the lonk V mari, which had arrived ihm Cienfuego. An investigation by Dir. W. Jewell, of the College of Physicians, resulted in the declaration thai-" Ist. Audience of a malignant type prevailed in the city previou- to the arrival of the M. darin; 23, That none of the seamen of the _V . daow s'ekened : 3d. That none of the laborers erupl ved in unbading the Murderin had taken the discese : tth. That in no case Las the disease been communicated to any person visiting or engaged in attendance uri the sick : and. 7th. That not a single instance can be met with Loving it- origin to the south of where the Mandarin las last." Dr. Heustis-in his work on Erilemic Fevers. jul L-bed ai Calasla. Allana. in 1825 -- in his account of the epidemie in Pensacola. in 1:22. (Seis addhti Lai testimony in the same direction. He says: " It was pretended by the air .- cates of imported contagion that the fever was brought in a vessel which arrive l from New Orleans about the beginning of August. The captain vi this res-el was among the fir- that sickened and died of the malignant f-ver. ani this after his arrival in Pensacola. . . . . The opinion of one of the most respecialde physicians in Pensacola was. that the disease originated entirely from Jai causes. Such. al-), was the conviction of the Board of Health." Dowell. a page 19 of his YNIne Farer. although favoring quarantine, says : - Yellow fever occasionally leaves its habitual, assumes a migratory character, traveling ever great extents of country, not infrequently breaking through the mus: rigid juar- antine. But in these migrations it seems to have a prescribed course, along which it pays no respect to any impediments placed in its way: bur joice in its line of travel [as in ]sf.] are often un tected by non-intercourse, ar. i bence the importance of quarantine." Quoting from such high auth rifles as Deters Warren Stone, J. C. Nott Hunt. Jones, Fenner, and Denvett Dowler. Dr. Dowell continues : " These great migrating epidemics revolve in a wave, hurl- ing their terrible influence in a great and sometimes very extended area, often continuing their march during successive years-as the one which commenced in Rio Janeiro, in 1850, and culninatell ins devastating course at Norfolk. in 1856, putting to fight all theorie- about local origin anl the procsections of sanitary cordons or quarantine restrictions." Illustrating the irresistible forre with which these great yellow fever epidemics sweep over the country. the following is copied from Dr. Bennett Dowler, perhaps the first among med-
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A HISTORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER.
ical authorities on yellow fever. He says: "The geographical area of yellow fever in 1853, as compared with former invasions, was greatly extended, in- cluding Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas. Six States of the Union *- a vast territorial expansion of alluvial, diluvial, and tertiary formations; valleys, dry prairies, elevated plateans, irregular terraces, low undulating hills, bluffs, and pine woods, interspersed with bayous, lakes. shallow basins, shaking prairies, large bays, dense cypress swamps, cane- brakes, colos-al grasses, inundated plains-a vast region, undisturbed by vol- canic action, where the geological or telluric causes of disease, if such be really regarded as causes, must be nearly uniform. Of these States, five are washed by the almost tideless Gulf of Mexico, presenting a vast, depressed. marshy, sandy, shelly, rockless litoral, which covers from the Rio del Norte to the peninsula of Florida, deeply indenting the Temperate, yet approaching the Torrid Zone; having low, outlying islands in front and numerous great rivers flowing through the background; bringing detrital matter from the high lands and primitive formations of several mountain chains, with tertiary limestone and coral reefs trending along its eastern portion upon the Floridian peninsula." The British report on yellow fever and quarantine of 1852 enumerates ninety- six towns and villages of Spain wherein yellow fever has prevailed in this cen- tury, many of them far inland, high, dry, rocky, and hilly, and among the mountains; as, for instance, Gibraltar, where it has prevailed fatally. Beni- nett Dowler also mentions the fact that the yellow fever prevailed in Tam- pico and Vera Cruz in 1846, '7, '8, and in New Orleans in 1847; and that. though a large proportion of the American army, going to and returning from the Mexican war, passed through those places, they did not contract or spread the disease, nor did it prevail among the American shipping. Dr. T. J. Heard, of Galveston, who has treated yellow fever, and is one of the most eminent physicians of that city, says that from the "year 1839 to 1853 he had no reason to believe in the communicableness of the disease, either by infection or contagion. In 1853, however, Mr. B. R. Rucker, Postmaster at Washington, on the Brazos River, was taken down with the fever. Washington at that time was a distributing point for the sur- rounding country, and the Galveston and Houston mails came to the town at night, when Mr. Rueker would open them. Yellow fever was at that time raging in both Galveston and Houston, and Mr. Rucker undoubtedly caught the disease from infected mail-bags. He conveyed the disease to his family, but further than this it did not spread. About the mid- dle of October, 1853, Mr. Richard Niblett, now of Brenham, owned a drinking saloon in Washington. He received his ice from Houston every night, and opened it personally. He had a most violent attack of fever.
* In 1878 it was confined to eight States (embracing five of the above six): Kentucky. Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
+ The postmaster at Covington, Tenn., was the only person there who had the fever in 1878. He died. He received a heavy mail that had been detained at the Memphis office for some time, opened it, and from it inhaled the poison which in three days killed him.
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A HISTORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER.
About the last of the same month, Joseph Brooks and wife, of Navasota, had the fever in New Orleans and came to Washington, stopping at the house of a Mr. Hurse, in the suburbs of the city. Mr. Hurse, his wife, and two children, caught the fever and died. In 1863, about October 1, a man from Orange came to Houston with his wife and stopped at a house near Kennedy's mill. When Dr. Heard arrived the man was dead, and his wife lay dying of yellow fever. The disease extended in the immediate neighborhood, and took a direct course along Buffalo Bayou, following the di- rection of the prevailing wind. About December 1, 1864, Mrs. Vincent, sis- ter of ex-Lieut .- Gov. Henderson, fled from Houston on account of the yellow fever. A negro left behind took the disease, and, as there was a great lack of blankets, an old carpet was used instead .. On his recovery the carpet was stowed away in the garret. Six weeks afterward Mrs. Vincent returned, and, going into the garret, took the carpet out to air it. Four days after this she had a most violent attack." The Natchez Democrat published the statement, during the epidemic of 1878, that the year 1819 was distin- guished by the prevalence of a remarkably malignant type of yellow fever : " The weather was generally hot and sultry, and there were few and light showers of rain. Unlike its usual course, the fever did not spread, but broke out in widely different localities at one and the same time, raging on the same day in Boston and New Orleans. The pestilence ascended the southern rivers, attacking not only the large cities, but extending also into the country. . .. Of the southern cities Natchez was the greatest sufferer. A destructive flood had that year swept over the lower town and surrounding country, and when the waters subsided they left the usual amount of sedi- ment and debris, covering hundreds of acres. This was not removed, and the heated rays of the sun rendered it a putrid mass of infected matter. Be- sides, the streets were overflowed and the cellars filled with water. Early in July intermittent and remittent fevers began to prevail, which gradually as- sumed a malignant type. By September yellow fever was fully developed, and became so general and so deadly that as many of the population as possibly could fled, and only nine hundred and ten remained to take their chances. . The poor were removed to a more healthy locality, and cared for at the city's expense. Those who remained suffered terribly, and, as was the case with the epidemic of 1878, no class escaped. Many domestic animals were infected with the disease and died, and even the wild deer in the adja- cent forests are said to have died from it." Dr. Labadie, of Galveston, says: " . . . That it takes its origin aniongst us. I believe that all old settlers will agree with me; hence quarantine laws and regulations must always become a dead letter. Our city Fathers did once pass a quarantine law, and built a hospital on Mosquito Island, now Fort Point. By day and by night they had men and drays clearing yards, alleys, ete. Every blade of grass was pulled up. Never was a town more clean and nice. Whilst we were com- forting ourselves in our happiness and certainty in our supposed security, and no steamship to arrive, as they had left for the North to be repaired, and no arrivals from New Orleans or any other port, a servant, a German girl, in the
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A HISTORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER.
employ of W. J. Berlocher, living on the strand, was taken sick and died with the black vomit before any one was aware of her real disease. She was a stranger, had not been out of the house for weeks, and had only been about four months at this place from Germany. About that time many were taken sick, and it went on increasing. The poison had inflamed all strangers and the atmosphere: our quarantine had become a dead letter. It. spread out rapidly, destroying about 460 lives before frost put an end to its effects. A few years ago it broke out in one house on Tremont Street, and, before three days had pas-ed, two deaths were reported. On the following day seven new cases were reported, and it went on as usual, doing its work of death. There had been no communication within two weeks previous. The first victims had been living here only a few months. It carried many natives to their long home as well as 300 unacclimated persons. It is believed that yellow fever can not be personally communicated: it must be inhaled : it is an atmospheric poison. If so, the strong gulf winds that visit us at this season seem to be unable to blow it away. If it proceeds from the soil, we have seen the waters of the gulf rise and wash over a great portion of our town to the bay; much rain has fallen upon our streets and yards, fill- ing every sink, washing the whole surface of the soil as clean as sand could be washed. yet the disease progressed in its direful work steadily, as if neither winds, thunder and lightning, overflows or rains, had visited us at all. It is attached to the sills and under-floors of our houses (perhaps so, in a shape most imperceptible to the eye). This matter or animalcula may be carried from place to place in goods, clothing, packages, etc., and, finding a suitable atmospheric pressure, may easily multiply or propagate itself in the air. So it may go on increasing, advancing slowly from place to place, even con- trary to strong currents of wind, and harbor in particular places to increase. In this belief quarantine regulations may be of service. This animaleulæ matter, or subtle poison, once inhaled, may be some days in the stomach or linings before it takes effect on the system; hence a person may travel many days before he is taken sick. It matters little where he goes, it will do its work sooner or later. I have read of cases of black vomit in Chicago being traced to New Orleans. I have seen cases in St. Louis of twenty-four days from New Orleans-in 1828; some often twenty days from that infected port die of black vomit. To see new cases of yellow fever ten, and even twenty. days after the appearance of a white frost, sustains me in the opinion that it is not possible to know who has inhaled or who has not inhaled the poison on leaving an infected place: and who can tell when this poison was inhaled? I dare say it will be difficult to contract the disease twenty days after a white frost. Doubtless, a frost does destroy this matter, or this subtle poison, yet many times this mysterious and awful disease comes and goes we know not how ....* For many years my thermometer has stood front 90 to 100°, yet no yellow
* In Alexandria, La., the heavy frosts of October and November, 1853, had no appre- ciable effect upon it. The epidemic, which almost decimated that town, went on to its limit of life regardless of conditions.
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A HISTORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER.
fever appeared among us. When writers say it requires a heat of 90? or upward to produce the poison, there must be other conditions in the atmos- phere to bring it about, or to cause this matter to hatch and multiply. Does it not require a peculiar state and exposure to the atmosphere to cause weevil to breed in a grain of corn or in a barrel of flour? Some years these are more in number than usual. If it is in the air or atmosphere, has it a con- ter to hold it-elf? can not the strong gulf winds that we have blow it away ? We know they have no influence over it whatever. The prosent epidemic has passed away from us without a frost, yet we witness no peculiar change in the season from any other. . . . . It has appeared for several years in succession after hard frosts and winters: it has followed or continued its deadly march after very mild winters; hence, we have no possible means of telling what portion of the South will be exempt. It comes without giv- ing warning, and we only know it is among us by several cases being takeu down within a week, and by its unmistakable marks on the body after death, and by black vomit." Dr. J. M. Reuss, accounting for the epidemic of In- dianola, Texas, in 1867, says the fever was introduced by a pair of second- hand blankets," sold by some persons connected with a small craft which had arrived from Vera Cruz, where it was raging a few days before the 20th of June. Two young men, who had only examined these blankets, were at- tacked, and one of them diedl of black vomit. A negro woman, who nursed one of them, also died of well-marked yellow fever. A lady from New Orleans, where the fever also raged, was taken sick at the hotel, and is supposed to have been another medium for its spread. Besides, as was the case in Memt- phis in 1873 and 1878, fever of a continued and dangerous form prevailed. which confu-ed the physicians. Dr. Reuss says he himself had several cases of fever of a more malignant type than the common climatic fevers of that region. The first death occurred on the 24th of June, and in less than a weck the whole business part of the town was struck down as by lightning, there being by that time between 125 and 150 cases, out of a population of 1,000. It reached its acme in two weeks, and lingered in the suburbs for over a month. The poison was most fatal at night, and generally took held of nurses and doctors when it reached their places of residence. Dr. S. W. Welsh, of Galveston. traces the origin of the epidemic in that city in 1en7 to a young German, who arrived from Indianola on the 28th, and to a per-
# Dr. Jacob S. West, of Texas, cites two cases where the yellow fever was introduced by sacks of coffee. Both occurred in 1867. At Liberty, Texas, a sack of coffee landed two miles from the town, from the steamboat Ruthven, which, coming from Galveston. was refused permission to land at the town. This sack of coffee was taken to Liberty on a dray, through an atmosphere, up to that time, perfectly healthy ; but all who shared the coffee were taken with yellow fever, which spread with disastrous effects. The second case was that of a sack of coffee hanled fifteen miles in an open wagon, from Corpas Christi, where the fever prevailed, to a point near Meansville, where it was divided among the purchasers. Not one of these escaped ; all of them were seized with yellow fever, and many of them died. But those who did not so share were, singularly enough, exempt. The conditions necessary to its spread were not there.
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A HISTORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER.
son who arrived on the 22d from New Orleans. In a few days the fever had complete possession of about a square mile of the city, "while," he says, "its origin would not seem to be connected with any particular meteorological con- ditions adequate to account for the disease, it is unquestionably true that the climatic conditions were highly favorable to its spread, given a starting point. The month of May was temperate, showery, pleasant, and remarkably cxen:pt from all febrile diseases; nor was there any thing to be observed in the type of diseases to foreshadow yellow fever. June, however, was a month of un- interrupted hot weather, the thermometer ranging daily from 85° to 90°, with a breezeless. and stifling atmosphere. Toward the close of the month, from- the 20th of June to. the 5th of July, a period of two weeks, there was heavy falls of rain daily, literally flooding the streets, and accompanied by unusual electrical phenomenon. In the intervals the sun shone brightly and with intense heat. The city was in good sanitary condition, and every pre- caution taken, and every thing had been done by the authorities that could ward off' the dreadful visitation. Notwithstanding this, by the end of July the fever prevailed epidemieally. It spread to Houston and to all the towns on the Central Railroad, committing ravages far beyond decimation. The popular and oft-expressed belief that a frost was absolutely required to put an end to-to arrest and extinguish-an epidemic of yellow fever, was falsified by the events of this season. There was, up to the 8th of Janu- ary, more than two months after the cessation of the epidemie, no frost, 10 freeze, and only a few days of cool north wind. Yellow fever obeys, I am persuaded, certain laws, as fixed and immutable as those which govern the growth, development, and decay of organized matter. In the execution of such laws, the rise and fall of the thermometer can exert only a limited and temporary influence, can only retard and hasten the march of epidem- ies. Look to Havana, Vera Cruz, and other localities where yellow fever is indigenous, and where the temperature never falls to the freezing point, and yet in those cities the disease, after having run its course, obeys the laws which must everywhere control it, subsides, and finally disappears in the latter part of summer or first of autumn, to return with renewed viru- lence the succeeding spring, and run its destined course and subside as before." Dr. Welsh, concluding his report, extended so as to cover all the points in Texas attacked in 1867, says: "The remarkable uniformity in all the reports from all parts of the epidemic distriet. a> respects the range of tem- perature, winds, and rains, must have arrested the attention of the reader. The winds were, with few exceptions, from the north, north-east, and south- west. . The wind from these quarters during the summer months are not what are known as northers proper, which are, as a rule, associated with a low range of temperature, and blow with great force continuously for two or three days, and are very dry, having been wrung of their moisture in their course over the high range of mountains between Texas and the Pacific; but are mere puffs alternating with dead calms, the temperature be- ing at the same time extraordinarily high, and the atmosphere saturated with moisture. Singular influences clearly obtained throughout all the region
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