Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1878-08-17
YELLOW FEVER.
Causes, Symptoms and Treatment.


As there is now alarm in all the
southern cities subject to its inroads
few facts from the best and latest author
ties who have had personal experience
with the disease may be of interest. A
day Or two OF languor and " bad feel
ings" generally precede an attack of
yellow fever. Then comes chill much
like that of common ague, but accompa-
MED by pain in the head ard spine.
The chill lasts fro m few minutes to
few hours, and consti .utes the first
stage, or that wherein the morbifc
causes are invading the. system. The
next is the febrile stage which follows
the chill. Generally it is noted of a
very high grade, the pulse being 100.
A distinctive symptom and a char
acteristic Of yellow fever il suppression
of the urine. Another symptom, which
can be readily recognized by any physi-
clan, nurse or other person who has ever
been with a yellow-fever patient, is a
p culiar Odor or nasty smell from off the
patient, and which can ever be perceived
in the streets during an epidemic, it is
indescribable, and belongs to no other
fever, and with doctors experienced in
yellow fever is of itself sufficient for
diagnosis. The patient sees that the
poison has also struck the nervous sys-
TEN; he is tremulous, easily excited, and
startled by the least noise. The fever
takes generally frem twenty four to
forty-eight hours, the sufferer becoming
delirious and raving in a large proper.
tion Of cases. II asked why he screams
he can give no adequate reason. Usually
on the third day the fever abates, and
there is calm--the third stage-which
lasts from few hours to a day, and is
the turning point of the disease.
This calms ends either in cOnva>
lescenCe or else in the fourth or
fatal stage, that of collapse or black
vomit, from which not one in fifty ever
recOvers. The vOmit, which seems to
come up without effort, looks life coffee
grounds, and is the death warrant OF
THE POOR PATIENT.
About the fourth or fifth day the eyes
turn yellow. The skin also assumes a
yellowness like that of bruise, or a
bright jaundice yellow. However, the
patient does not turn yellow in more
than in one case in six. AS to the causes
Of the scourge, the old atmospheric the
ory has gone by the board, and the best
writers now seem to have settled down to
the belief that the poison is of animalcu-
lar origin, these animacules generating
and Spreading over surfaces like grasshop-
pers and caterpillars, and being
introduced into the human blood.
If they exist, the most powerful
microscope has hitherto been
urable to discover them. One fact that
seems to point to their existence is that
the same extremes of heat and cold that
kill all other insects also kills yellow
fever, whose contagion cannot exist aud
becomes innocuuus at 800 and 2l2o. yell
low fever is always killed out after a good
freeze Yellow fever never spreads above
800 feet above the level of the sea. Ac-
| cimatization does not prevent, and no
person has second attack. The period
of incubation is generally four to nine
days, though persens have been known
to carry it iu their system twenty three
days. and then take it. Without treat
ment seventy.fve out of every hun.
dred will die. With treatment
and good nursing, however, about
one in three is the average mortality,
In the great epidemic of 1867, in
some Texas towns, one-half died who
took the fever. As to the cure, no rem
edy has yet been found, and all treat
ment so fa-, even by the best physicians,
is as empirical as the causes of yellow
fever are unknown beyond conjecture.
HISTORY OF EPIDENIICs IN NEW ORLEANS.
According to the best writers, the
great epidemics that have scourged New
Orleans in the past may be tabulated as
follows, with the time of breaking out
| opI whole nupn har of deaths