Remedies, Cures and Old Time Practice
Incidents of the Plague (Yellow Fever)
Osceola Sun
17 October 1878
Twenty persons in Memphis gathered to observe the Bishop’s proclamation to
observe a day of prayer.
The Apalanche says not a single refugee who returns to Memphis before a
freezing frost will live.
Colonel Jack Wharton, United States Marshall at New Orleans, has recovered
from an attack of fever at Mississippi City.
In 65 days, 2,800 men, women and children have died in Memphis out of a
population at no one time exceeding 15,000.
A New Orleans landlord took the silver and family Bible as security for rent
of a house in which two children were down with the fever.
At New Orleans a drunken father and his dead child were at the same time
being taken the one to the station house, the other to potter’s field.
A New Orleans father went to Europe and promised his five children a lot of
toy presents. When the presents arrived all the children were dead.
When fever appeared at Chattanooga the town was almost depopulated in a
single day. The rush was for the mountains. Old buildings, abandoned long
ago, were filled to overflowing.
A little waif, 5 or 6 years old, whose mother and father died of the plague,
has been shipped from New Orleans to San Francisco via Louisville and St.
Louis. A placard stating the facts is placed upon his person, and the
conductors are to take care of him.
One of the rich men of Memphis, who owns a hotel, and who was himself in a
safe place on the breaking out of the great plague, wrote to his
Superintendent to “reduce the salaries of all the employees immediately”.
That rich man’s name has been filed away in our private archives, and if the
“old man” lives he will be able to resurrect that old scoundrel. That rich
man not only owns a hotel, but a great deal of other property in the city of
Memphis. – Memphis Avalanche.
In company with a friend yesterday afternoon I visited several camps, within
a radius of 11 or 12 miles of Fulton, filled with refugees from our little
city, and found every body alive and well, but exceedingly anxious to hear
from the outside world. The camps are strictly quarantined, and neither
myself nor companion were allowed to enter, being stopped at picket-line by
the guard, which is relieved day and night, with all the formality of the
regular army. – Paducah Sun.
A tramp took refuge on Friday evening in a church about three miles south of
Dyer, Tenn., known as Beech Grove Church. He was quite ill, and on Sunday
and Monday was visited by a physician from near Trenton. He died on Monday
evening. The feeling was strong Monday night to burn the church where his
remains were then lying, and cremate them. We have not learned the final
disposition of the body. His case was pronounced yellow fever, but on this
point we are not prepared to speak authoritatively. – Jackson (Tenn.) Sun.
A nurse at Hernando wrote to a Memphis Howard: “Hell’s Delight, Oct. 1. –
Dear Doctor: How could you leave me here to starve; I am broken down for
want of food and rest; Quinn will die, but he is so aggravating that he may
live for two or three days; he has no friends, and no wonder, for a more
cantankerous cuss I never met with. The folks at the rum-mill above are only
swine, and will not come near me. I am sick and starving, and in
self-defense will have to leave or kill the patient, and I do not like to do
either. Come at once or I leave.”
It makes cold chills run all over one’s body to hear some of the horrifying
incidents related by the Howard physicians. One of these was told us
yesterday by one on duty in the northern part of the city. A man and his
wife were living together in rather an isolated locality. The husband was
sick with the fever. The physician made his call about 3 o’clock in the
afternoon, when he found him very low, but the wife, who had undertaken to
nurse him, showed up to that time no symptoms of the fever. He called the
next day as usual, and found the man had been dead 12 hours, and his wife
lay beside the corpse with a burning fever. She had been taken so suddenly
and so severely that she was unable to summon assistance. – Memphis
Appeal.
The Chicago Tribune’s Memphis correspondent writes: “A sad incident came
under the observation of the writer today. He was attending the family of a
Frenchman named Labadie, in Fort Pickering. Several members of the family
had been stricken, the mother dying three weeks ago, before the Doctor had
been called to attend them. Mr. Labadie was nearly convalescent, and the
Doctor yesterday morning made what eh supposed his last call. As soon as he
was gone, however, Labadie dismissed the nurse and made one of his children
bring him a bottle of tincture of opium, another of tincture of ergot, and
another of paregoric, of each of which he drank a quantity. Early this
morning Dr. Luppo was called to treat him for poison, but he had taken such
quantities as to resist every known remedy, and died in a few hours. It is
supposed he committed suicide in grief from the loss of his wife and the
distress surrounding him.”
Messrs. P.J. Kreig and T.L. Sheffield, both members of the Can’t Get Away
Club of Mobile, returned from Grenada yesterday. They report order restored
in that ill-fated city, the fever having exhausted itself for want of
material on which to feed. Every citizen who did not leave Grenada has had
the fever excepting Rev. Dr. W.C. McCracken, rector of All Saints
(Episcopal) Church. There are a sufficient number of convalescents there now
to take care of the sick, most of those now down being colored people.
Business houses were opening and receiving goods, and soon the wheels of
commerce will commence rolling along as usual. They came by the Chicago, St.
Louis and New Orleans Railway to Memphis, and they say that not a station
was passed on either of these roads but what more or less cases of yellow
fever existed. Messrs. Krieg and Sheffield will enter immediately upon duty
with the Howards in this city, and havnig great experience with the worst
phases of the prevailing disease, their services will be invaluable. –
Memphis Appeal.
