Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-08-14

cholera having our devoted city In its grasp.
/ doubted no longer. This man died OF
cholera.
.aThe epidemic was not preceded BY pre-
monitory diarrl oea, or chOlerine. There
was no complaint Of diarrhea among our
citizens during the first week in June,
- But while diarrE9a was not gen.
| eral, was it not prominent in individual
cases-the music of the rattle before the
poisoned fang festered in the Vitals! In .
| few, not many, cases, this was so. Miss
H., IL years, q fine healthy child, plump
and rudy, living on North College street,
near Capitol Avenue, retired to rest, on the
23d of June, in perfect health, and arose,
| at g on the morning OF the 24th, In the
same condition. At 7 O'Clock an hour alter
| she arose, her call to eVacusts her bowels
| was so urgent that she could not run out,
| but squattiDg instantly upon chamber,
nearly filed it. saw her In twenty MIN
utes alter. Rice-water was running from
| Der bowels as she Law, and she threw up
similar material ju after my arrival.
| Cramps now seized her, the pulse glided
| from beneath the finger, the skin was cold
and damp, and she died in six hours after
| the first operation. This child had eaten
| twelve peanuts on the preceding evening;
she had been otherwise rig div dieted.
There were cases, however, where diarrhea
had existed for days before vomiting ano
collapse" EGaT
WHENCE WAS IT
The Doctor recognises no special respon-
sibility to show how the cholera came to
Nashville. He believes there is no town on
the American continent that can originals
cholera but like small pox and Its congen-
ers, measles and scarlet fever, which came
from the East, ard have become Do
INVESTIGATED, Anglicised; SO cholera will
finally be classed among the ordinary dis
eases of the country; but it may become
domesticsted without losing any Of the
malignity." BE this as it may" he adds,
"it comes to us now from Asia. Precious
little is known about it. We know that its
geographical prevalence, is coextensive with
the habitable globe. But to the question
why (and this is common to all great cpl
demics) it should delight to linger and de-
stroy at one place rather than another, when
SO pre-eminently cosmopolitan, our science
offers no answer" DR.. Bowling regards it
as only ridiculous to appeal to waters or
geological formations Of particular areas in
explanation of these visitations; and he re-
CARDS as most unsatisfactory of all the ap-
peal to exhalations from vegetable matter,
s'living, dying or dead" or gases from tie
earth, air or water, or all, through solar heat
or otherwise, to explain why cholera pre-
walls in a very malignant form at one place
or spot and not at another, "for these
things exist only in definite places, in def
mite seasons Of the year; while no one has
to learn that cholera exists by turns every
where aud at all seasons" The Doctor
proceeds:
"The cholera being on this continent,
with continuous lines of railroad from San
Francisco to Galveston, and from ocean to
ocean, it is not difficult to imagine how its
seeds might be sown at thousands of places
while thousands of other places would es-
cape. The very language emrloyed by the
ancients proves that the idea was familiar
to them, of disease coming down upon a
people, like the contents Of PandorA's box,
lust as we see is the case with cholera to
dsy-epi demos upon the people; not from
man to man, but upoC.
aNo one pretends here that the disease
entered the city like an invading army, at
one point, and diffused itself through it, for
all physicians know that the facts concern
ing the Eruption of the disease here are just
IS we have stated them-the facts being,
indeed, obtained from them. Every ward
in the city, about the sane time, offered up
one or more victims. The disease tell
upon them. The seed-cloud had spresd
itself over the city, and siftod its destructive
missiles upon its population. Those who
received The missiles in their bodies were
more or less affected, according TO their
susceptibiities very many OF them, possi-
bIy, not so much so as that their bodies, in
turn, eiaborstors ofcholera germs to go up by
sunlight, and fall, astheir predecessors, upon
the people. That these germs are under
the influence of law that ensures Them q
vitality only for very limited period, would
seem probable, from the fact that the dis
ease call only keep Itself alive but for a
very short period at any place; or which
would seem more probable, the people at
The points asssiled rapidly lose their suscep-
tibility TO the power or these germs, II, In.
deed, it is not true that very thrilling per
cent, of any population possess any suscep-
tibility whatever. ALI people CAM OF be |
successfully vaccinated, and many will not |
take smallpox when exposed to its conta- |
gion. But few children seem susceptible |
TO the power of scarlet fever, while almost |
every one takes influenza. Providence has
seen to it that epidemics are not to depopu- |
4 4 20 40 hfo
say to secure large exemption by with |
holding inherent susceptibility. This I'M
portant truth is illustrated by the fact that |
opposite modes of treatment secure about
the same results; or, 10 state it more accu-
rately, the result is conditionally predeter. |
mined and inevitable, and in defiance Of |
what art attempts to achieve, save by by
giene; God here, as elsewhere, helping those
who help themselves.
"That our cholera was not contagious is
proved by thu fact that no physician or pro-
fsssional nurse took it, and our first cases
were among those who had been living
quietly, for a long time, where sssailed.
This epidemic, then, was not contagious
thu precise conclusion of DIR. Drake con-
corning the cholera that prevailed at Gin
cinnati In 1882. Nor here, as there, had
spy particular part of the city disobliging
preference shown il. He says, That it
was not introduced from abroad, either by
persons or things, is now universally be-
iievei; and l may add that, during its
who.e continuance, not single fact occur
red that went, in the slightest degree, 10 es-
tablish its contagious char cter.
Nor has miasmatie loo ,lities any apparent
agency ia its production, for it appeared in
all parts of the city, high and low, thickly
and thinly peopled, clean and dirty, nearly
all at the same time.' All this was pre-
eminently go here. We can, in perfect
truth, say of our epidemic what Drake has
recorded of his. Every one of
our physicians agree that nobody did come
here from any place, and die with, or re-
cover from cholera, neither before our
cholera commenced, during its progress
or since its departure. The great
trouble with our doctors, in
the beginning Of cholera here was, that the
coming man didn't come. Parties to medi-
cal opinions Numerically opposite, all agree
in this, that none of our citizens returned
from journey home, and had cholera, and
that no one in the wide world came here
with it from anywhere. Had
any stranger come here with cholera, it is
impossible that all of our physicians should
Of no foot. a1d had O,la |