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 47
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to be the product of the marsh or swamp. Emanating from a more deadly and pes- tilential source than mere rotting leaves and a wet soil, the virus is possessed of spe- cial qualities in keeping with the foul source of its origin. It gives no warning of its coming,* it is limited geographically ; it is transmissible in fomites, and is, of all specifie poisons, perhaps, the most intensely infectious ; the disease runs its course quickly and ceases, one attack usually giving immunity from a second. Typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, the plague, and yellow fever are only such products as we might reasonably expect from effete animal matter under certain conditions of special foulness. Their specific nature, transmissibility, and power of spreading, independently of the conditions of their origin, are no proofs against their har- ing such an origin." Substantiating these views, Dr. Holt gives this sickening description of the source, as he suggests, of yellow fever in New Orleans. He says : " It is not asserting too much to declare that our privies are the most dangerous enemies of our lives and happiness. There is hardly one in New Orleans but whose contents have free access to the soil, to saturate the ground with liquid ordure. Thousands of them were originally huge boxes or wooden tanks, but are now only common sinks or pits in the ground, with hardly a vestige of the woodwork left. The most mischievous parts of their contents soak into the earth, and so contaminate the soil under our feet that specimens
# "While Esculapians have no special gift of foretelling which will, and which will not. be an epidemic year," says Dowler, in 1853, " history furnishes presumptions, analogies, and de- ductions more or less favorable to the future in New Orleans, even though the next few years should be as insalubrious as the past. Epidemics have not only a limited period of increment and decrement in any one year, but they usually have more prolonged periods of increment and decrement through series of years, often constituting what may be called a cycle of variable duration, after which they generally cease. So it was with the plague in Europe : so it was with the fever in the Spanish peninsula ; so it was with the fever in the cities of the United States, in the North, as in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other places. Its invasion of the southern tropie, at Rio, so recent and severe, together with its decline in the north temperate zone, may be the precursors of its northern de- clination and southern advance, so that both Charleston. Mobile, New Orleans, and other southern towns and districts have now, at the least, the same probabilities in favor of approaching exemption that many other cities further north had more than half a cent- ury ago. before yellow fever appeared on the banks of the Mississippi. New Orleans is now, and has long been, near the northern border of the yellow fever zone. If yellow fever has, as may be the case, reached its culminating case in this city, its history else- where in the temperate zone indicates a progressive decline. Charleston, desolated at the close of the seventeenth century, was nearly exempt from yellow fever in the first quarter, and in the two last ynarters, of the eighteenth century. New York was exempt for forty years, ending in the last decimal period of the same century-a period longer than the exemption of which the present forms a part-the prolongation of which may be sud- denly arrested. for any thing that human foresight or science can show to the contrary. The history of the past affords no guarantee that its scenes shall ever be repeated. It is as idle to deny as to predict this lamentable contingency. It is consolatory to reflect, however, that the plague, as well as the yellow fever, has almost entirely left Europe, and that the latter disease is scarcely known in the Atlantic States of the Republic. No thanks to quarantine! If any visible causes can be assigned for this exemption, the most probable are the extensions of knowledge in hygiene, physiology, and physical or sanitary. im- provements. Thanks to science !"
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of subsoil water, taken from different depths, as low as ninety-five feet, and from different parts of the city, have been carefully analyzed by Professor Joseph Jones, and have yielded a large percentage of urea and organic inat- ters, the products of animal excretion, fully fifty-three grains to every gallon. ' It is evident,' Jones says, ' that these waters are suitable neither for drinking wer for washing, nor for cooking. In fact, they are as bad as, if not worse than, the drainings of graveyards' -- which he proves by comparison with certain English analyses. During wet weather, these vaults or sinks quickly fill with water, and overflow, flooding yards and gutters with ordure. Under a sun ahnost tropical one- half the year, this ferments, and emits a most abominable stench, which, of all others, must be a fruitful source of disease, operating directly in its production, and indirectly in lowering the vital stamina of the inhabitants. While in wet seasons these vaults are flooded, in dry weather, as before stated, they are largely emptied by their fluid contents soaking into the ground, thus saturating the soil upon which we live with human excrement. In this respect it may be properly stated that the people have a huge privy in common, and that the inhabitants of New Orleans live upon a dung-heap. Is it possible to imagine a sanitary coudition more deplorably bad? That epidemic diseases should sweep at times as a fire is no marvel. It is a righteous retribution for violated law. The excellent health which we usually enjoy is more greatly to be won- dered at. However, so long as this flagrant disobedience of sanitary law ex- ists, so long must we surely pay the price, as we paid it last summer." And this picture, so repugnant to every sense of decency, as well as violative of the simplest laws of life, will serve not only for New Orleans, but for every city of the South, of the West, or of the North, where adequate provision is not made for the washing away or carting away of offal, refuse, ashes, and human exereta. This may be said, too, of many cities that boast of a sewerage systeni, supposed to be effective, but that is really defective-that leaks its noxious emissions into the soil in the form of seepage, or gases more subtle and deadly. Memphis, so much more highly favored as to situation, could not, and never has been in a condition so disgraceful as this which Holt paints for New Or- leans, and which we can well believe to be true. With unsurpassed surface drainage, and bayous, that send their branches far beyond the confines of the city, and into the country to sources that well up from springs of pure, good water -- with these, Memphis is well drained and dry, and it might be sup- posed is beyond the contamination, which, after one hundred and fifty years has made of the site of New Orleans, as Holt says, a mere "dung-heap." But a careful examination reveals the fact that this is not altogether the case .* The privies, many of them in Memphis, are so deep as to reach the sand sub- stratum on which rests the great clay bank known as the Chickasaw Blutt's.
# Mr. James B. Cook, an accomplished architect and sanitary engineer, who has resided in Memphis for many years, while the plague was in progress, in 1878, gave his testimony as to the origin of the epidemic, in a letter for the press, of which the following is an extract: " The predominating cause of disease, is filth. So largely recoz- nized is this-that filth is the origin and promoter of disease-that special legislation
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Through this sand the water of the river finds its way at every great rise, so is enacted by the governaents of the civilized nations to prevent its accumulation, for proper and effective means to carry off the same, and the creation of Boards of Health, with such law- and regulations for the proper supervision of towns and cities in all that relates to sanitary affairs; and so effective have these sanitary boards been in the work of reducing tilth diseases to a minimum, that diseases of an epidemic foim, which formerly were so well known to large cities, such as London, Paris, Berlin, Boston, News York, and Philadelphia, are now rarely known, and, if known, are confined to small I- calities. The creation of sanitary boards and the enactments of laws governing cities. in a sanitary point of view, has given rise to a new profession, co-ordinate with that of the civil engineer, viz., the sanitary engineer; and it is to the sanitary engineer we must look for the proper arrangement of the machinery for the workingsof a city, and to him alone must be contided a city's drainage and water supply, forno city can be healthy without a proper sys- tem of drainage and a pure water supply. Without these we engender filth and fevers. Have we. in this city, these two conditions so essential to health? I an-wer most positively, we have not. and to these two causes may be attributed the present plagne. As an example of what the exereta from defective drainage may do, I will call attention to the fact, that in one of the healthiest towns in England -- Over Darwen -- a man contracted a disea-e from some other town and went to that place to die; after his arrival, and within a very short period, 2,035 people were attacked with filth fever, out of which 104 died. A thor- ongh examination. as to the cause of this disease and the terrible mortality, showed that the excreta of this first patient passed itself through channels used for the irrigation of a neighboring field. The water-main of the town passed through this field, and, alth migh special precautions had been taken to prevent any infiltration of sewerage into the main. it had been found the concrete had sprung a leak and allowed the contents of the drain to be sucked freely into the water-pipe; thus the poisonous excreta was regularly thrown down the drain, and as regularly passed into the town. After this discovery. the authorities went to work and removed the cause; the sway of the filth devil was arrested, and the town once again assumed its healthy condition. I cite this case to show what defective drainage can do in an hitherto healthy town, and with the thermometer at a low temper- ature. Turn to our own city, with its ten thousand odors assailing one's nostrils at every turn. and at every street corner, with the cellars of stores reeking in the accumulation of filth of years, others with stinking and contaminated bilge-water, bayous contami- nated with the excreta of many privies, bayous with sewers emptying into them by the express permission of the city authorities, also with the drainage from the woolen mill in Fort Pickering, being the stinking washings of dirty wool and other refuse matter; these and a thousand others, any one of which is enough, in this latitude, to produce death to a community. We have nothing to complain of in the atmosphere of Memphis; it is as salubrions and as fine as can be found anywhere, and for general healthfulness, excepting at filth-disease times, is rated high. So far as I am concerned, and I have traveled far on the earth's surface, I have never been in a healthier locality. What, then, have we to complain of? We have to complain of filth and its results, brought about by the negli- gence of those in anthority. To filth and the filthy condition of the city I attribute the present experience, and had this filth never been allowed to accumulate, we never should have been visited by this present plague. 1855 taught a lesson, we failed to profit by it. 1867 taught another lesson. 1873 tanght a fearful one, but we failed to profit by it. Scientists recognize the cause of disease to be filth. Remove the canse, then the effect will disappear. The recollection of the fever, in the fall of 1873, has had much to d, with intensifying the disease of the present time. Fear is playing its part, together with the absurd rumors on the streets, the wild teachings of fanaties, and last, though not least, the headings to some of the local articles on the fever in the daily press. Fear has played its part. and to these two agencies-fear and filth -- we are indebted for our unhappy and deplorable condition."
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that in many places the gradual advance of the Mississippi may be actually ganged by the rise of the exereta which, when the river falls, is drawn after the water through the soil, the gases formed by its assimilation finding a pas-age, no doubt, to the atmosphere above, to become the means of propagating the deadly poison of yellow fever. In the early days of Memphis, privy vaults were purposely, and are yet, made deep enough to reach this sand, as a sure means of dispensing with the labor of the night-soiler. When the population was small, as in 1855, when the yellow fever first visited the city epidemically, this was not felt to be the evil it now is, when perhaps 12,000 families are in- ereasing the capital of this bank of death by not less than 1,000 barrels of ex- creta every day, and by at least 4,000 barrels of offal and other refuse. The accumulations of filth are more rapid than is generally imagined possible. If the amount of animal and other food consumed by 50,000 or more persons per day is recalled, some estimate may be formed of the amount of refuse which accumulates each year in a city without a scavenger system, and the people of which have not been educated up to the standard of even a half-way system of hygiene. In such a condition, there can not fail to be a gradual deteriora: tion of human health and strength, especially when the human filth poison is supplemented by the equally deadly malaria of the swamp. In his message to the city council, on the 11th of September, 1824, Mayor J. Roffignac stated that the primary cause of the insalubrity of New Orleans was due to two causes, one of them internal, the other external. He said : "The internal causes are: 1st. The filth ereated by a populous city. 2d. The low grounds and pools where stagnant water lies, the wooden gutters [equal to the Nicholson pavement, now decaying in Memphis] constantly wet and fermenting under the rays of a torrid sun. 3d. The want of privies in most of the populous districts, which renders it necessary to reeur to the disgusting and dangerous use of tubs. The external causes are the marshes lying north and west of the eity, uncovered but un- drained, and deprived, by the cutting down of trees, of the shelter formerly afforded to them by the shade of a luxuriant vegetation, for which the very miasm- that now spread death and desolation among us were a source of life and vigor. 2d. To the south and east the Mississippi, which in its periodical retreat, at the hottest season of the year, leaves in its tracks a great portion of the filth which has been thrown into the current, but is brought back by eddies. 3d. The winds, which at the moment we feel most secure, may, as was the case in 1822, convey to us the deadly effluvia of the dangerous spots which they sweep in their course." Dowler refers to the excavation of the original basin of Canal Carondelet, in 1796, and also that of the basin for the same canal in 1853, as coincidents of the epidemies of those years, and he urges that the crowding of filth, a want of ventilation, incomplete drainage, and humidity must be injurious to the health and detrimental to the physical comforts of the citizens-healthy or sick, pure air being vital to both. He
# The government of Memphis has recently been changed, and very much for the better. One, and the greatest result of this change, is the enforcement of sanitary regula- tions, that bid fair, in time, to completely reverse this unsanitary condition.
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then describes the homes of New Orleans, as follows: " About ninety in every hundred houses, even in the richer portion of the city, are constructed in a manner that must be condemned in any climate, but in none so much as in this city, depressed as it is below the high-water mark of the river, almost every-where, and in the rear nearly on the sea- level. The lower floor, in a great majority of the houses, especially the stores, rests on the humid soil, sometimes at a lower level than the streets, no air being admitted underneath. The fresh water newer pliocene being largely mixed with decaying animal and vegetable matter, moistened by rains and infiltrations from the river, gutters, and swamps, generates perennial erops of alga, fungi, infusoria, blight, mildew, mould, etc., which abound in, under, and around the lower story of these unventilated houses, where, indeed, crops of mushrooms would flourish, were they not repressed by the tread of the tenant. Hence goods rust and spot; delicate colors are discharged ; health, too, is deteriorated, from moist and unsalubrious exhalations during the day. and at night-as many persons sleep on these decaying, humid floors. Phy- sicians, in visiting the poor, especially in depressed portions of the city, must have often found the flooring of houses floating, and sometimes, after rains, quite covered with water too filthy and offensive for description-laboratories for generating carbonie and other deadly gases, predisposing to disease, and rendering recovery from any kind of siekness tedious, too often impossible. What drug can supply the place of pure air, pure water, and dry sleeping?" These conditions, he thinks, " with the warm season of the year, with unac- climated constitutions, and with aggregations of people," is all that is needed to produce yellow fever in epidemic form, and bring death-speedy, yellow, bloody, repulsive, and hideous death-to thousands of unsuspecting households. " Much may be done," says Dowell, " in the way of preventive, by sanitary measures. No animal matter should be allowed to decay in the city limits. Bones, heads of fish, dead chickens, slops from the kitchen, should be re- moved; all low places, where there are worms, bugs, or snails, should be filled up or covered with sand until no smell would arise after night, or after a rain. This would, no doubt, prevent the spreading of yellow fever to so great an extent, and would make persons living in the district better prepared to stand the disease when attacked. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Savannah, Charleston, and other cities have been wholly or to a great extent relieved from this scourge, by being better drained and better sewered than when it prevailed in them. New Orleans has been greatly improved by its water-works, and but for its shipping, I doubt if it would spread there now. Its mortality has been greatly reduced since 1853,* though the inhabitants, have increased." Within the last fifty years land-draining, town-sewering, and stringent laws regulating
This is true. The total number of deaths in New Orleans, in 1878, was something under 4,000, the population of the city during the epidemic being not less than 220.000 ; while in Memphis, the total of deaths was 5.150 out of a total population of 20.000, of which 14.000 were negroes and ouly 6,000 were whites-the proportion of deaths accord- ing to color, being 946 colored to 4,204 whites, out of a total of 15000, sick.
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the deposit and final disposition of garbage, ashes, offal, excreta, and debris of every kind, have largely contributed to the saving and prolonging of human life. The plague, the cholera, the small-pox, and other diseases are no longer dreaded in Europe, or in our own country. The conditions under which they once prevailed epidemically are not allowed to exist. The result is a vast improvement, not only in the health of the people, but in their strength and will to resist disease in any form. In England, in towns where, before 1845, the average annual mortality was as forty-four in one thousand, it has been reduced to twenty-seven, and where it was thirty it has been reduced to fifteen. In our own country-so far in advance of all others in its general average of happiness, peace, content, cleanliness, and good food, and plenty of it-the average of life is a special wonder to European vital statisticians. But much yet remains to be done to reach the standard possible to a people who de- sire to reach the highest limit of perfect sanitation. A national, the State and the municipal Boards of Health must be elothed with almost absolute pow- ers. The enforcement of national, State, and local quarantine must be com- mitted to them. To them, too, must be given the oversight and selection of street-pavements, the construction of sewers, the soil-pipe connections, and plumbing and gas-fitting, the sweeping of streets, collection of garbage, and disposition of the same, establishment of slaughter-houses, chemical and other manufactories, so as to prevent the poisoning of the waters of our rivers, which should be sources of life, not death. They should, in a word, have oversight, control, and direction of every thing calculated to preserve the . public health and advance the average of human life, and for that purpose should be sustained by penalties, both of fine and imprisonment, equal to the magnitude of the trusts reposed in them. Heretofore legislation has been largely devoted to the material prosperity of the people. Let us now legis- late to protect and save life. Until this is done we can not hope for that immunity from epidemic diseases which quarantine it has been supposed could insure. We must cease to rely upon the doctrine of chance as it is illustrated at our quarantine stations, and if we can not have an international system of quarantine, let us have the next thing to it -- a quarantine that will defend every mile of our coast on the Pacific as well as the Atlantic side of the con- tinent, a quarantine that enforced by the national government will cover the full period of forty days in every case, as less than that may let in persons or goods already having the seeds of yellow fever, and therefore the seeds of a possibly and probably malignant epidemic. The country thus sealed to persons from infected places, quarantine would have a fair trial, and the theorists who oppose it would be silenced by its success, or be assured a triumph by its failure. Prophylaxis, fires, gun-firing, disinfectants, all have proved unavailing. Quarantine has sometimes (very often), as we have seen, totally failed. If sanitation, enforced as above suggested, fail too, then there is nothing between the people and death, but flight. They must emigrate in a body from the places threatened. In case this becomes necessary, on the appearance of yellow fever it should be enforced by the establishment of the one-man-power, under a fearless, vigorous, and
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vigilant man, whose example of energy would become contagious, and whose measures would likely be such as would inspire confidence in his intelligence, sagacity, and will. The example furnished by Count Greg- ory Orloff, sent by the Empress Catherine, in September, 1771, to stamp out the plague," then ravaging Moscow, is a case in point, The city had been, for months, in a condition of chaos. Murder was rife, and the incen- diary was plying his torch. The archbishop had been killed at the very horns of the altar. The city, thus delivered to confusion and anarchy, hailed Orloff's arrival with acclamation, and he deserved to be, for he attacked the plague with such vigor that he overcame it. Drawing a number of smi- tary cordons round Moscow, he maintained so strict a quarantine that even the dogs which ran across his lines and the crows which flew over them were shot. All popular gatherings were prohibited; no burials were allowed within the -city; and the faithful were even prevented from entering the churches, being obliged to listen to divine service from without. Before Count Orloff's ar- rival, the common people had shown a decided aversion toward the hospitals, in which they were roughly treated and badly fed by coarse and ignorant med- ienl practitioners. Orloff inspected the buildings set apart for the sufferers, visited them frequently, and soon brought about a change greatly for the better in the treatment of the patients. The number of daily deaths soon fell to 300, and then became smaller and smaller until the plague was stayed. Count Or- loff was enabled, on November 28th (O. S.), to leave Moscow rejoicing over a clean bill of health. Such an example as this should not be lost sight of. Had Memphis been governed by one such man in 1878, the mortality might- not have been halfso appailing as it was; and it is due to the energy and de- termination of the Citizens' Relief Committee that it was not greater. That
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