The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-08-13

New York, Aug. 12.-(Special. )-This city has recently seen a slaughter of the innocents unparalleled by any thing revealed In the previous reports of the health authorities. There have been times this summer when the heat has caused a mortality unknown in places which the average New Yorker looks upon as unbearable during the heated term. There Is no record. for instance, of heat prostrations 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 pros trations which did not have a fatal re- suit and of which no record was kept can only be guessed. .:@. .<:-
 The majority of deaths from the heat were due to ignorance, a fact nowhere brought home to the observ- CT more sharply than in the teeming streets of New Yorks great East Side where children wilt away by the hun dreds in the hot months. while their parents stand helplessfy by. These deaths do not come under the head of heat mortality. for children do not topple over in the streets with sun stroke like grown men, nor are they carried to the hospital with tremen- dous temperatures and put into ice baths With the children the deadly
 
 eral collapse usually taking the form of gastro enteritis, a convenient med teal term covering any inflammatory disorder of the digestive organs. The victims are taken to the hospital only at the last minute, ana frequently too late for all the skill and care in the world to undo the harm wrought by months of grotesque mistreatment.
 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 Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital. known through much of the East Side as the free doctor" was called in haste to a stifling room in one of the tenements that line the side streets running off from Third Avenue. There he found a year-old baby in violent 'convulsions.
 The most frequent cause of con- vulsions 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 moth CT answered.
 Beer and huckleberries would be a sufficient explanation for the death of a baby a year old. but when com plicated by scorching heat and bad weather less extraordinary diet creates untold havoc. Penny slices of watermelon, cool, thirst satisfying, and covered with dirt and dust, visi- bIe and invisible. of the streets are rivalled in juvenile favor by penny ice-cream sandwiches made of heaven knows what The child is not sum struck, but what he might have with stood in cool weather and with plenty of fresh air is disastrous when the mercury is climbing steadily upward and the narrow window of foul room opens out upon a baked expanse of stone strewn with the refuse of hun dred families.
 It is easy to show that the people of the slums are responsible for the suffering of the slums. but 1t is hard CT to say how they can improve con- ditions. The ordinary East Side apart ment, reached by a staircase climb ing upward through malodorous dark nesss consists of three rooms, two Of