Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1879-01-23
The vagarIe. Of Yellovv FEVER.

3
After forty years study of yellow fever,
DR.. Holcumb, of New Orleans, is thor
oughly impressed with the vagaries Of
the disease. Its geographical freaks, he
says, are extraordinary. Between fifty.
and hundred years ago it ravaged our
northern cities. especially New York and
Philadelphia, as badly as it ever ravsqed
New Orleans. Now It is unknown in those
localities Until 1850 it never attacked
Rio Janeiro, although that city was con-
stantly exposed to it for fifty years. Since
1850 the fever is found at Rio at all sea-.
sons. There is one city on the northern
coast of South Ameriea-Car
senting all the supposed causes of yellow
fever in the most concerted form, where
no case ever occurred. It will appear for
a dozen years successfully in one of the
West India Islands, quarantine or no
quarantinei and for the next dozen it will
not appear, although unrestricted inter-
course with infected ports it permitted.
The monster will survey the whole south
ern coast of the United States and pounce
only upon Savannah. twill deliberately
pass by New Orleans and move up the
river and attack Shreveport and Memphis,
Yellow fever is unknown in the tropics of
the eastern hemisphere, where. all the
supposed causes of it exist in the highest
degree. 1t seems to be an African poison
engrafted upon the white race of the two
Americas. The native African has no
such fever. The African brought to the
West Indies never has yellow fever. The
West India negro brought to the United
States is not liable to it. The slaves of
| the southern cities had this disease very
rarely before 1858. Since then they have
been becoming more and mere subject to
it. Who can give any plausible reason
why the native-born Creole population of
Louisiana, especially those of French or
| igin, should have been almost entirely ex-
empt from yellow fever for hundred
yearse And who can account for the
change going on during the last thirty
years, slowly but surely, so that now the
children born here have had littlc exemp-
ton more than the children of the
stranger?
''Yellow fever" continues DR.. Hol-
cOmbe, ''has been known to visit all kinds
of animals, from the horse and the COW
down to the rat and canary bird. Doctor
Rush says that in 1898 over five thousand
cats died of yellow feverin Philadelphia.
In an epidemic which visited Gibraltar in
1872, every monkey, parrot, dog, cat, rat
and canary bird in that place perished by
this disease. Perhaps the yellow fever
commission will explain why the flies dis
appeared so mysteriously this SUMNER
| Why the mosquitoes vanished from some
! localities altogether, and why, at one
time, it was impossible to get rid of the
ants, and at another time impossible to
find one" Speaking of the alleged conta-
giousness of yellow fever, DR.. Holcomb
says: eff one man look out a window at
a yellow fever funeral, he will catch it,
another person may live in yellow fever
hospital, and breathe the poison all day
and night, and keep in rubicund health.
If you don't want it you viii be apt to
] get 1t, bptif you seek it you can't find it.
Desperate women, seeking death, have
| often sought in vain. by the utmost ex-
posure to the yellow fever poison. I'm
acelimated doctors, science-blind or crazy,
have slept with yellow fever patients,
dissected their bodies, injected their blood
into their own veins, and even drank the
black vomit { y with total impunity.' ,
And, finally, the doctor concludes as fol
lows: ''Lastly, and the queerest thing o.
all, there is prophylactic against yellow
fever, not likely to be discovered or in.
dOrsed by the present yellow fever com.
mission. That is, the very cautious and
skillful incubation with the poison o.
the rattlesnake, so as to produce a slight
, artificial disease resembling yellow fever
This will prove more eff1cacious than bel
ladonna against scarlet fever; it may
even rival in value the use of vaccina
ton against small pox. But as this meas
ure is based upon and confimatory. of tho
t homeopathic law of cure, it will have tt
wait upon the sure but gradual evolution
> of homeopathy itself, upon the slow
march of great ideas, and upon the hap
5 py times when allopathy and quarantine
are alike extinct
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