The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1905-08-13
HARVEST OF DEATH
IN SUMMER MONTHS
Many Children Perish in New
York'S East,Side
PARENTS ARE HELPLESS
One Baby When Given Beer and Huck-
leberries Died of Commissions.
Shocking Conditions Are
Revealed.


New York, August 12s-This city has
recently seen a slaughter of the inno-
cents unparalleled by anything revealed
in the previous reports of the health au-
thorities There have been times this
summer when the heat has caused
mortality unknown in places which the
average New Yorker looks upon as I'M
bearable during the heated term. There
Is no record, for instance, of heat prostra-
lions in the island of Cuba except among
newly arrived visitors, but In five days
in this city sixty persons were killed by
the heat, and the number of prostrations
which did not have a fatal result and of
which no record was kept can only be
guessed.
Tho majority of deaths from the heat
were due to ignorance, a fact nowhere
brought home to the observer more sharp
~ than in the teeming streets OF New
York's great east side, where children
wilt away by the hundreds in the hot
months, while their parents stand help
lessly by. These death do not come I'M
der the head of heat mortality, for chill
dren do not toppIe over in the streets
with sunstroke like grown men, nor are
they carried to the hospital with tremen-
dous temperatures and put into ice baths.
With the children the deadly work of the
heat Is shown py a general collapse usu-
ally taking the form of castro enteritis,
a convenient nlsGical term covering any
inflammatory d.sosder of the digestive or
CANS The victims are taken to the hos
pltal only at the last minutes, and fire.
quenty too late for all the skill and
all 20. "a
wrought by months of grotesque mis-
treatment.
Strange Diet for Baby.
When the heat was at it's worst and
the whole city was like a great gridiron
with the paved streets red hot bars, the
district physician of the POSTGRADUATE
Medical School and Hospital, known
through much of the East Side as the
free DOCTOR was called In haste to
sitting rooom in one of the tenements,
that line the side streets running off
from Third avenue. There he found
year-old baby in violent commissions.
THE most frequent cause of convul-
sions Is bad food" the doctor said to
himself. Then he turned to the mother
crying by the bed. What did the child
have for supper" he asked.
Beer and huckleberries," the mother
answered.
Beer and huckleberries would be suffi-
Client explanation for the death of a
baby year old, but when complicated
by scorchng heat and bad weather less
extraordinary diet creates untold havoc
Penny slices OF watermelons, COOL thirst
satisfying, and covered with the dirt and
dust. visible and invisible. of the streets
are rivalled in juvenile favor by penny
ice cream sandwiches made of heaven
knows what. The child is not sunstruck,
but what he might have withstood In
cool weather and with plenty of fresh
air Is disastrous when the mercury is
climbing steadily upward and the narrow
window of a foul room opens out upon
a baked expanse of stone strewn with
the refuse OF q hundred families.
1t is easy to show that the people of
the slums are responsible for the suffer-
Ing of the slums. but 1t is harder to
say how they can improve conditions. The
ordinary East Side apartment, reached
by a staircase climbing upward through
malodorous darkness, consists of three
rooms, two of which are usually little
better than closets with windows open
ing on the hall or a narrow airshaft. In
the main room the occupants eat, COOK
and wash and here some of them sleep.
The room hot enough under any circum-
stances, is made more uncomfortable by
the stove with the eternal pot of tea sim
mering on It, and bathtub for the chill
dren is an unknown hygienic luxury.
Women Drink Tea.
All through the day the women drink
cup after cup of black tea, and when the
man OF the family is at home the can
of beer takes its place upon the table
Beer Is cheap-an enormous amount is
put into a tin pail for ten cents-it Is cool
and can always be had at minutes
notice Milk Is neither so cool nor so
cheap, and few tenement apartments are
provided with refrigei=ators In which to
keep 1t. So the whole family drinks the
beer an. is thankful for it and the babies
are stricken with gastro-enterltis ana
wilt within ,forty-eight hours.
When the morner is finally aroused to
the seriousness of the situation. she car
ries her child to the hospital dispensary.
Bellevue and the POSTGRADUATE are both
situated in Ia -sart of the great tene-
ment district lying east of Third avenue
and between Fourteenth and Thirty
fourth streets, but most of these cases
come to the Post Graduate rather than
to Bellevue. the big municipal institution.
The badies' wards of the Post-Graduate,
with their fifty-eight beds for sick chill
dren and twenty eight for little cripples,
are perhaps the best equipped In the
city. but their greatest value lies In their
connection with the school, of which the
hospital Is but necessary adjunct. Medi-
cine Is now taught in the laboratory, 30
to speak-not by theoretical lectures-and
the children carried TO the di6pensary are
treated by the faculty of the school, part
" as a work Of charity among the poor
and partly as a means of conveying in
struction to the physicians and students
who attend the clinics. In addition to
these practical demonstrations of treat
ment of childrens illnesses. which, at
this season of the year especially, form
such large part of the family physi-
,Nn's practice. the wards are also thrown
n to the students and an opportu-
..y given them to see the actual pro-
gress of the many cases
The hospitals Of New York. however,
cannot begin to take care of all the
suffering children of the tenements. In
the search for a breath of air and some
relief from the sitting atmosphere OF the
crowded living-room, the roofs and fire.
escapes are called into play and 1t is
hardly an exaggeration TO say that hot
night sees half of the population OF New
Yorks poorer quarters sleeping out OF
doors So intense is the suffering caused
by sultry night that the commonest pre-
cautions for safety are neglected. Re-
tnnlr haf- o.