The Republican journal., 1898-10-06

|
| common for regular physicians to endorse and
| recommend proprietary medicines but III this
| case l have no eqnivocation or hestancy in so
| doing"
The quick constipation cure - Doctor
Pierce's Pleasant Pellets. Never grippe.
town, shambling up its steep activity.
The Suspect pen-a smaller boat house
few rods from our hospital, also built
out over the water and reached by another
long pier-continues to send its frequent
cargoes of yellow fever patients and
corpses to Siboney. Day after day, as |
sit in our Notwithstanding the flies
off this sick man, reading to that one, or
feeding another see the little boat with
its tell tale yellow flag, come up to the
stairs of ''the pen" iput myself between
it and my patients range of vision; but
though we both pretend to ignore it, we
know TOO well what is going on. Some
stiff, still shapes, dashed to planks, are
brought down the stairs and put aboard
the boat, followed by mournful process
sion of soldiers, sick unto death. If the
latter are alive when they reach Siboney,
sixteen miles distant, they will go into
the great yellow fever hospital, with
perhaps one chance in ten of recovery; and
the shapes are bound for cremation some
where down the river.
One OF the near by hills, greener than
the rest with gruesome suggestions of
exuberant verdure, is faced on its water
side with the high adobe walls and mas
sive gateway OF Campo Santo. 1t needs
no funeral ulns and carven crosses to in
dicate the purpose of that enclosure:-
the vultures that continually circle above
it attracted by the odors they love, tell it's
horrible story of bursting vaults and shall
low rented graves from which bones are
evicted to make room for new tenants.
Nothing affects our sick men 50 unpleas-
antly as the sight of these disgusting buzz
yards, which abound everywhere in tropi-
cal countries and have increased hun
dred fold in Cuba within the last three
years Impeled by their uncanny instinct
OF approaching death, they often fly so
low over the open corridors of the hospital
that one could almost touch them with
ones hand and occasionally gorged bird
drops into our midst a reeking chunk of
carrion from its tired claws. Such is the
soldiers horror of these most loathsome
creatures of the air that a near by glimpse
of one will sometimes throw nervous in
valid into commissions. And no wonder
for they have seen them ON battle fields,
perhaps tearing at the faces of dead COM
rades. | have heard the men talk among
themselves about the vultures and tell
each other stories of personal experiences.
They all feel that the nauseous birds form
the chief horror of war; and know too well
the meaning OF their approach when the
dead are lying in the underbrush One
man says that after the fighting at Bar
iquiri, he lay two days on the field,
wounded in the thigh, shooting at the
buzzards as they settled down to their
feast, and that he believed another hour
of it would have left him a raving maniac
Do you remember that horrible old pic
ture of the Jewish mother madly beating
off the vultures from the bodies of her
five sons, hanged in row? There is a
wounded Rough Rider in the hospital
who looks the personification of courage,
but who trembles and shudders whenever
vulture is seen, even afar off like black
speck in the sky. They say that he fought
like tiger in the taking of Santiago and
never finched in the face of Spanish guns j.;
but afterwards, when he lay in the long
grass with a bullet in his breast, he went
into an hysterical fit when he saw the
vultures coming, covering away from
them and crying like a frightened child.
He knew they would not modest his own
body so long as life fingered in it; but
there were still shapes lying all around,
upon which the evil birds settled in
clouds. There was a sound of tearing
and when the black clouds lifted, there
was nothing left of each shape but clean
PlChou oOuoS anu UlOOuy rags VI UNIFORM.
Yet there is a good deal to be said in
favor of the vultures, the scavangers of
the tropics. Without them the pestilence
which follows close on the heels of war
would claim more victims than shot and
shell. Their work of sanitation, though
terrible to think of,-guided by unerring
instinct to corpses hid in the onaparrel
which the burial parties fail to find, is as
necessary as that of their fellows above
the Persian Towers of Silence.
Immediately in front the hospital is the
new immune camp, their white tents
strung in triple rows half mile or more
along the water side street of Santiago
When the sun shines, the men appear to
be having pretty good time-cracking
noisy jokes, pitching quoits and playing
cards, grouped, Indian fashion, around a
dirty blanket spread on the ground. When