The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1905-08-12
THE seoURGE OF YELLOW FEVER.

One OF the two important things in the public
mind at this hour is the presence of yellow fever
at New Orleans. The other is the peace confer
ence Of the two perhaps the reading public is
more interested as to what will turn up at Ports
mouth than what is going on at New Orleans Yet
1t Is within the memory of most of us that yellow
FEVER carried of more victims to hastily mprovised
graves than any epidemic that ever scourged this
country. This happened throughout the gulf states
and tennessee about twenty years ago. Why are
we so Indifferent about yellow fever now?
twenty years ago the islands of the gulf and
Caribbean sea were owned by Spain, and were at
all times hotbeds of pestilence Neither were the
countries of South America immune. From these
came the germs of yellow fever into this country,
taking root first at New Orleans because it was
the principal city the gulf for traffic with fever
tainted countries and because New Orleans itself
by reason of its topography and unsanitary con-
dltlon invited epidemic.
The plague spread to Memphis, and i'm this city
on the Mississippi it wrought the greatest destruc
ton. No home was safe, no escape possible One
could imagine the destroying angel going about
to slaughter the frst-born in the houses of Israel
deeds OF heroism and sacrifice were enacted that
elevated man IN the estimation of his kind and
wiped out the sins of the half-world. The act of
the harlot who closed her house to vice, turned
1t into hospital and risked her own life in the
service of nurse, recalls the Magdalen of Judea
This was twenty years ago. Since then Cuba
has been wrested from Spain and Havana made
clean New Orleans fumigated and improved its
alleys and dumping places. Memphis, when the
lever lett 1t, set up the broom as the emblem of
progress and safety. Leaving out the anguish it
caused, the yellow fever epidemic was the best thing
that could happen to Memphis. 1t is now the clean
est city in the country.
The time has passed when yellow fever should
excite undue alarm Science has discovered its
cause and science has learned to deal with and
extermlnate the 1t simply comes from the
bite of peculiar mosquito, the Stegomyia. Ac-
cording to the New Orleans Picayune some of these
insects brought to the city in cargoes of fruit
from Central America as doubtless they have been
carried to Mobile and other fruit ports and thew
stung some of the workmen who unoaded the shirs.
The mosquitoes being here, the business of sci
ence is to kill them and this is being done at New
Orleans. Cisterns are being screened and oiled
cutters and cesspools are being oiled, and all in
fected or supposed infected premises are being flu
mlgated with sulphur. Houses are screened and
mosquito bars are in general The people them
selves are protected by amounting hands and faces
with lotion made of alcohol and such essential
oils as pennyroyal, lavendar, cedar, and the like
1t might not be bad notion to try that remedy
for the mosquito nuisance even in this part of the
country. 1t is admitted by medical authority that
every time the insect draws blood from one person
it is likely to inpart the virus of disease in the
next sufferer it visits, assuming the first person
bitten to be afflicted by blood disorder. The same
reasoning might be applied (and we believe it mas
been advanced), concerning the house fly.