Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-01-26
LA GRIPPE is ONLY A WARNING
Shirley Dare's Plea on Behalf Of the
Women of America.
THE MANY ABODEs OF PEST1LENCE.
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH !

cities have been taken by this terror, which
the French, with their talent for epithet,
rightly call la grippe, because it throttles
the victim at a spring. Taking the case
from known facts, this weeks uselessnesS
has cost not less than S25 head for the
hundred thousand smitten by the epidemic,
in loss of business, time and wages, count
ing from bank presidents to street laborers.
This does not estimate the loss of strength,
the lowered vitality. the shortening of days,
| for nature loses no accounts ana all short
ages are found charged with relentless &C
curacy at the closing up of life. To say that
every epidemic involving third Of the pop
ulation costs $40 head is moderate esti-
mate, and by this the hotel bills, for La
Grippe in her short visit to Philadelphia,
for instance, will have to be paid by the
municipality in round million Of dollars.
FROM A FINANCIAL STANDPOINT.
Preventable ill-health is the most oppres-
sive extravaganza a city can infict upon
itself 1t reduces her able-bodied men, it
dampens the talents Of Its keen business
minds, it erases the beauty of its women and
blIghts the brains of its children. This,
worse than the poisoning of the Borgias,
will SOW the seeds OF death in many a brave
young breast, which apparently RECEIVERS,
only to find its power of resistance weak
ened beyond repair. Will no one see and
feel and make effort that these visitations
be blotted from the face of the world?
"What are you talking about 2" one says.
''This epidemic was due to climatic condi-
tiOns, wet year, high temperature, dan
gerous state of the atmosphere. It could not
be helped. 1t was the visitation of heaven
which we could not escape"
Is it unavoidable when man in thun-
der storm leans against telegraph wires and
meets his death by bolt of lightning? Is
| it the decree of heaven when children play
ing with matches among open powder bar
rels blow up building?
1t is the will Of heaven, of any sane deitv,
that foolhardy risk and constant careless
ness shall receive signal penalty, not that
men shall die without cause. Will you
hear some condensed facts from the sound
est, most learned and experienced men IN
this country, worth any score of the profess
sion that can be mentioned for strong sense
| and interest in humanity-Dr. Bowditch,
of Boston, and DR.. John Bell, of Philadel-
phis.
DANGER FROM USED-UP MATTER.
Each human being and animal throws off
daily from one to three pounds of used-up
matter, noxious to life in any shape and
growing still more Virulent with each hour
of ferment. This does not fly up into the
clouds, but is ground into the street dust or
| washed into the sewers. The organic matter
of the breath forms glutinous deposit on
walls, windows and furniture, especially OF
closed rooms, decomposing rapidly and giy-
| ing the offensive odor known to persons of
| any delicacy of sense. The rankest poison
of the breath, however, is a gas whose
fumes in volume little more than that
which charges our close bedrooms will kill
a dog in three minutes, a poison of which
you who scoR at its effect will probably die
in time. Air fould with our own breath is
the great cause of tubercles in the lungs, of
an@mia and blood poison of various degrees.
Still, thanks to the porous nature of all
buildings, we could hardly keep fresh air
out of our houses, if we did not earnestly
cultivate an inferno of noxious vapors below
our houses, 5 per cent of all the gas mace
leaking into the soil, forming a choke
damp, and sewage distilling its three or
four corrosiVes, any one of which Stays like
Sennacherib's angel.
GASES OF SEWER CARNATIONS.
Dr. Bowditch, Of Boston, SAYS in his pow
erful argument for sanitation, the chief
gases in sewer emanations are carbonic acid
gas, whose fatal effects we all know, sui
phuretted hydrogen, which gives the strong
smell Of drains before storm, and is pow
eriul narcotic poison, which in concentra-
tion kills as suddenly as prussic acid. 1t
kills strong men cutting river tunnels, when
hardly to be recognized by the odor, or by
the test Of lead paper, not more than. 100,-
000th part being present in the air. The
third poison is sulphide of ammonia, the
pleasant gas reeking from livery stables in
cities, which generates diphtherIa, and pros
trates the neighboring houses with malarious
symptoms, referred vaguely to some un-
known depravity of town air, but really
manufactured by the decomposing heaps
next door. Drs. Barker and Letheby, of
London, who analyzed sewer gas with a
thoroughness never excelled, report that
this ammonia produces asphyxia, liuuefes
the corpuscles of the blood, and produces
symptoms OF typhoid. Worse is its
dreadful property Of conveying the
less volatile products of putrefac-
tion into the air, giving validity to
the putridities OF streets and rivers during
hot weather, holding in suspension the of
fensive matters of coal gas. The light
carbo-hvdrogen found in sewers is what
accumulateS and explodes, blowing the
covers off manholes every once in while.
The organic vapor in sewer gas propagates
its own decay, with terrible consequences in
the living body, and symptoms of most
active poisons.
THE PLAGUE OF THE DARK AGES.
Now mark these symptoms with care.
The appetite fails, the bowels are disturbed,
chronic diarrh9a sets in, distress, suffocation
and nausea, giddiness and twitchinp. Ex-
cessive prostration follows, until the sufferer
is worn out by exhaustion or falls into low
fever. What difference is there between
these symptoms and those of la grippe? 1t
is complete diagnosis of the disease which
in the last fortnight has Frustrated
thousands all over the country, from one
and the same reasons in town or out of it,
blood poisoning by neglect of proper drain.
age and disposal of animal waste. The hu-
midlty of the atmosphere, the wave of
vitiated air imagined to roll across the Q 600
leagues of ocean between us and Europe
could never produce disease, were not the
conditions of deadly epidemic cultivated by
our civilization. A small percentage of dry-
ness in the air and our winter frosts are all
that continually stand between us and pes
thence, which is but modern form of the
plague of the Dark Ages The prostration,
the purging, the glddiness, the treachery Of
the disease too nearly resembles the plague
to be mistaken for anything but its ineal
descendant. For too many poor souls it
might as we'll be the plague outright for
disease can do no more than kill. The differ
ence between our sanitary habits and those
of the Dark Ages is that they kept their
sewage above ground at the doors of their
houses, and we bury it under the floors.
OUR COSTLY SEWER SYSTEMS.
It is not our costly sewers which prevent
worse plaques than ever decimated Europe,