The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-04-12
THE SICKLY SEASON.
Some Of the Depressing Experiences Of the
Early Residents Of indianapolis.

Early 1cSlucnJS OIL lHulHndpOIlSs
Some of our old residents have recently been
debating the time, and place, and person OF the
first sermon preached here, and the time of
erection of the first church, and organization of
the first Sunday school. There are other incl
dents of the early settlement of the city that
would be interesting in the details that a few
survivors might be able to recall. Mr.. Nowlar,i
tells US something of the use made of a 'deaden-
ing" caused by an invasion Of caterpillars.
northwest of the site of the Blind Asylum, but
not far from ii, in which the newcomers Guilt
yated their corn, beans, potatoes and pumpkins
that went with the venison shot in the woods
about the little settlement, and the fish caught
in the river, on or near the east bank of which
the most of the settlement stood, to make up the
food supply, except what was brought here from
the Whitewater on horseback through the un-
broken forests for sixty miles, or in pirogues by
the Indians from up the river at the Shawnee or
Delaware villages. This caterpillar deaden-
ing" or truck patch" was used in common,
though each family's patch" was marked sufi-
GENTLY to be readily distinguished from others.
In the summer of 1921, a very little while
after the preaching of the first sermon, malarial
disorders broke out. Whole families were down
and helpless with 'fever and ague' or ''chills
and fever" At one time or another every soul
in the settlement was sick but three. The first
death-Daniel Schaffer, the first merchandise
Cured that summer, and he was buried first in
the woods on the bluff of the creek bottom,
near the present corner of South and Pennsyl-
vania streets. but a little later was reburied in
the "Old Grave yard, v the site of which he,
with Mr.. Nowland's father, had selected but a
week or two before his death. From that time
on for twenty years the 'sickly season. was as
well marked a division of the year as the winter
season, and came about with as unfailing regu-
larity. Everybody may not have counted upon
a spell of the chills, but certainly nobody
known in this country at that time.
having been discovered by Pelletier only the year
before, and not brought even to New York for
several years The remedy for ma.
larial diseases then was bark and wine," con-
tanning the curative principle of the u~niyersal
alkaloid, but in a less efficient form. DR.. Coe
came in May, largely provided with these RENE
dies, just in time to be ready for the visitation
which began spreading rapidly about the middle
of August.
Occasionally, in the early days of the city,
while the 'sickly season" was an annual expert
ence, the ague produced an enlargement of the
spleen, it was said, but at all events a hardened
mass of considerable size, in the victims side,
called ''ague cake" 1t was not usually painful,
but it seems to have possessed some sort of ex-
hausting or enervating power that made the luck
less .taker of the cake" incapable of great or
prolongued e%xertion of any kind. 1t was usually
considered the sign of a broken constitution, and
pretty certain decline, though persons havelived
with it for a good many years, and recovered
from it entirely, it is said. Little or nothing
has been heard in a general way about here Of
this peculiar effect of malaria for a generation.
AS the country became more densely settled the
swamps were drained, the forests opened, and
the unwholesome exhalations reduced, and ma
iarial diseases greatly diminished. The 'sickly
season" ceased to be a regular or recognized Wis
ltor, and the 'ague cake" passed into the twi-
light of tradition with the milk sickness" and
salvation" The latter was no inconsiderable
evil of the early days of the city.
Milk sickness was never known in this vi
cinity, or at least never to an extent to create
alarm, but salvation" the effect of reckless or
ignorant use of calomel, was a frequent affection.
Sore and swollen gums, loose teeth, liberated
jaws and lips were the forms in which it showed
itself. Calomel was the universal resort in all
diseases, from collie to consumption. The doctor
would enter the house with his saddle
bags on his arm--none Of the fraternity
used buggies in those days-feel the patients
pulse, look at his tongue. and ask a few questions
about symptoms and conditions, and tear up a
sheet of paper into about a dozen little, inch
square bits, in each of which he would deposit as
DlACA L d Alto pOWutT d. uo COuiQ I'LL OH LILO
point of his pocket-knife blade. fold them tightly
and, rising, would say: ''Give him one of these
powders every hour till he has an operation.
Don't let him drink any cold water or milk, or
eat or drink anything sour. If he must have a
drink put some clean fire Goals into a cup of
water, and let him drink that That white
powder was calomel. Given by the doctor without
due caution, or taken by the patient without due
regard to the doctors instructions, the effect
was pretty safe to show itself in the glands of
the mouth before long. The liberation has
cheek, and the jaw-bone, andkilled the victim as
certainly, and ten thousand times more distress
fully than a bullet or a dose of poison.
The calomel practice. however, disappeared
many a year ago, with the "Sangrado' practice
of invariable bleeding, alluded to in the memoirs
Of DR.. j. Marion Sims, recently noticed in the
Journal. They went together, both in their use
and their departure. Both are probably resorted
to once in a while yet, but the ''purgare,
~saiquare ct clysterlzare' of Moliere's burlesque
on the old school of medicine in France, is not
now repeated in case of first failure, as in his
'resaiauare, repurgare ct reclysterizare.p In
nothing affecting the condition of society and
the health of the individual has there been so
radical a change as that from the medical prac-
tice of the first twenty years of the settlement
Of this city to that prevailing now. Not so much
in the introduction of new schools of practice,
for there are none here now that were not here
in the first score of years after the first settle
ment, as in the changes of mode Of the school
then and still dominant ere-the allopathic.
Fighting the disease with great doses of drugs
has given place to helping nature fight it with
very little drugging and a great deal of use of
natural agencies. b. r. S.
DryFt vryrnVr