The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1899-11-23

and those on the summit, are wide, well
built up and comparati vely clean; but the
heart OF the old city is composed of dark
and crooked alleys, filthy beyond compare,
some of the houses built ON activities so
nearly perpendicular that they are reach
ed by steps cut into rock. Buildings of
six or more stories, rising close above
each other, shut out the sky, and being
set back to back, allow no ventilation. In
this pestiferous labyrinth the poorest
classes are packed as closely as the sar-
dimes that form their staple diet. AS for
sanitation, as we know it, there is abso-
lutely none in this noisome quarter. All
waste matter, vegetables, animal and hu-
man, is carried off if at all-only when
heavy rains fall, from the cess pool in the
COURT yard of each house, down the slop-
ing streets in open cutters, No water is
ever laid on, and the people have to carry
the little they use tor household purposes
from the public fountains. No wonder
lllttN lIl40 iOCetlItl II INC scat VI INC
ic plague, which seems impossible to
stamp out. Its victims get average forty
or fifty day, of whom two thirds die. To
the terrible conditions of the place is add
ed poverty so abject that the people go
hungry from birth to death-and general
y make short trip Of it. Because of
Tbv-Sip1l wa lyDaSS tn i1,Su
Dourishment, they fall an easy prey to the
first disease that takes hold of them
Some say that the plague originated in the
entire fish diet OF the people; others that
it developed spontaneously, from the same
conditions Of life that produced the great
epidemics Of the Middle Ages. Meanwhile,
quarantined by a Gordon of police, the
wretehed denlzens Of the infested quarter
cut oil from employment, are hourly grow
ing hungrier and rendering themselves
better subjects for disease. Doubtless
the irregularity of the climate contributes
something to the unhealthfulness of Opor-
to. There is often difference of twelve
degrees centigrade between sun and sun.
A sea fog comes up the Douro every night
at the turn Of the tide, and at its best the
climate is damp and chilly. The plague
made its first appearance early in June, in
Fonte Taurine street. down near the
river. The first victim was a Spanish por-
ter, named Gregorio Blanco. He was tif-
ty years Old, unmarried and very poor.
He had long been in feeble health, and his
neighbOIs were so used to see him come
tottering home, faint and melancholy
after his day work, that they paid no at
ton when he returned one night sicker
than usual Next morning he was dead;
and at his funeral-which, according to
Portuguese CT stom, occurred the same day,
one of the coffin bearers was siezed with
fit of shivering, which presently ran into
raging fever, and in a few hours he follow
ed his friend, Gregorio. Thus, within thir-
ty-six hours, nineteen others, who had all
| slept in one crowded tenement, went by
the same short route TO the Campo Santo.
i BY this time, people began to be alarmed.
| Dl' ItlS"iuo oolSe. NdH EnSllnH Puyni-
clan in Oporto, whose name is properly
Richard George, made psychological
analysis, and dicovered bacillus of
| kitusaty yersin in the pus of suppura-
ton. The Junta Consultiva de Saude of
Lisbon,-a unique institution of Portu-
| gal, whose business is to look after the
| public health-sat in solemn conclave, dis
GUESSING quarantine regulations with a
view to keeping the plague out of the
capital; but nobody thought of fighting
it in Oporto, with sulphur fumes and
carbolic acid. When it was given out
that quarantine was to be established, up
wards of twenty thousand people fled
from Oporto, fearing not so much the
plague, as the scarcity of food sure to
follow; and some of the refugees carried
the deadly bacillus along with them to
other parts of the Peninsula Factories
and commercial establishments were clos
ed, and for three awful months the onl-
activity in the city was among avedig
gers and dead-cart drivers. With the
approach of cold weather, the plague
seems to have spent itself in Oporto, ex-
cept in the poorest quarter, known as La
Sc, where every house is cess pool and the
dark and noisome alleys, reeking with the
contamination of centuries, are veritable
breeding places of disease. Strict quaran-
tine is maintained over this section, in
are dying of starvation as from any other
cause 1t is said that rats and fieas carry
the plague about, and that if any small
animal is pricked with needle, dipped