The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1878-08-29
VOL. XIV---NO.
THE YELLOW FEVER.
CHASTITY Work of the Plague at Grenada.

Ghastly Work of the Plague at Grenada.
GRENADA, Miss, via PARIS, KEN
1UcKY, August 19.-Last night was the
most gloomy of all the nights in Grenada
since the yellow fever broke out. No
one con adequately set forth the distress
of the living. About seventy-fve whites
are fenced up in the place, so tied to it
by sympathy that they cannot leave, be
their longing for life ever so strong:
The whole country fears Grenada and
shuns its infected inhabitants. Yester-
day was the ninth day since the fever
began to rage, and of the cases developed
about 200 in all-not one has given
symptom of improving. All the patients
have been seized with great suddenness ;
each has had medical attendance and
nursing, and still seventy-four deaths are
recorded as having occurred up to this
morning. The town is not merely desc
late-it is a place so devastated by an
unconquerable foe that its condition is
one of pitiful horror. No one is seen in
the streets except the undertakes and
the physicians, going about on their
hopeless and ghastly errands. In every
house, almost, body is composed for
burial. Not that there is any ceremony.
A man is taken with the fever, he lies
down exhausted, falls into state of COL
lapse or delirium, and in few hours is
wrapped up in the blankets in which he
has died, and is hurried off to the burial
place. A force Of black men construct
the grave, the undertakers bring in their
coffin, the body is fastened in, and the
hearse is driven of. The burial service
is omitted, for the living have no time to
think of other services than those to the
sick. The clergy have stood up nobly in
their place, Rev. Mr.. McCracken, of the
Episcopal Church, being constantly on
duty as nurse and counselor Of the
sick.
Until last night there was no fear
evinced by the nurses, although there
seemed to be reason enough why they
should be afraid. Twelve deaths oc-
Cured in twenty-four hours, and the
poison seemed to be more virulent in its
action than ever. In the Bristol Hotel
there were twelve inmates; the fever
was among them, seven cases having ap-
peared. Among the sick was Mayor
Conley, whose family were in the same
house. He was prostrated on Friday
night. Before that he had been one of
the braee men who were determined to
out-face and fight the pestilence. His
son-in-law, Mr.. Atwood Wiltshire, o tele--
graph operator, who came down from
Memphis to assist Mr.. Redding, was with
Mayor Conley when he was taken sick.
In the midst of his labors the Mayors
nerve gave out suddenly, and he wentup
stairs to his room, lay down upon the
bed and declared that it was all over for
him, as the fever was upon him. He
rapidly became worse, and in his deli
rum tore the bed clothes in pieces. He
died early this morning.
The occasion for the panic yesterday,
besides the general tendency of the dis
ease to become swifter and more malig-
nant in striking down its victims, was the
prostration of nurses of the Howard As
sociation of Memphis, and the report
circulated quickly that the blacks we're
dying, and that six who were sick would
not recover. The supposition had been
that the blacks would not take the pest.
They had been reasonably calm about
the matter, but the prostration of one
caused a stampede of all the Others.
The remaining colored people hastened
to pack up few things, load OK wagons
and other vehicles and start ior the coun-
try. With six nurses down with the
fever, the blacks running away, and the
sick likely to die unattended, the situa-
tion becomes more alarming than it has
yet been. Already deaths have occurred
under nurses who had more than one
patient to attend. They would leave one
to visit another, and find the first patient
dead on returning. The number of
nurses is so small that the sufferers some
times cry piteously for water, and no one
answers them. AS frequent drink in
small quantities is almost essential to in
duce perspiration, this deprivation, that
cannot be helped, must continue. 1t is
fearful fate that stares the three-score
white people of Grenada in the face,
and there seems to be no probability that
it will be avoided. DR.. Vaudeville, who
came from Port Eads to devote himself
to the Grenada patients, yesterday de-
clared that the disease was so virulent as
to astonish him. "God knows" said he,
"that this is terrible. I have seen the
fever at Brunswick, at New Orleans, at
Memphis in 1873, and at Shreveport, and
l have never seen anything that can for
an instant be compared with this"