The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-14

eieIBy man on a tfaln ana recalled the ease to him. Yes. he said those peo- | rie thought it was too much trouble io disinfect, particularly since the reports did not give tuberculosis as the cause of 6eath. Now their child is dying of tu- heroulosis of the intestines.'
 The phase of this question closest D the south is the yellow fever epidemic. 'Epidemics are often msrepresented. " l says MT. Adams. If they were not l if early knowledge of threatening condi- tons were made public--the epidemics would seldom reach formidable propor- 1 tions. But-and here is the national hy- l gienic failing-the first instinct Is to COL ceal smallpox, typhoid, or any other dis case that assumes epidemic form Re peated observations of this tendency have deprived me of that knock-kneed rever- cnce for Business Interests which is the glorious heritage of every true American. As matter of fact Business Interests when involved with hygienic affairs, are always malign influence, and usually al incredibly stupid one. It was so 'n New Orleans, where the leading com mercial forces of the city, in secret meet ing, called the health officer before them and brow-beat him into concealing the presence of yellow fever, lest other cities quarantine against their commerce. Aud
 
 so firm foothold that suppression was no longer practicable, and the city on,y aYerted a tremendously disastrous epi- oemic by the best-fought and most mar 1owly won battle ever waged in this coun- try against an invading disease.
 Tt is interesting to note, by the way, ihat this epidemic, with its millions of dollars of loss to the city of New Or leans, might have been averted at a comparatively small cost had the city fathers possessed the intelligence and foresight to adopt a plan devised by pr. Quitman Kohnke, the city health officer. New Orleans gets it's drinking water from private cisterns. Each of these is q breeding place for the yellow-feyer-b ing mosquito. Dr. Kohnke introduced bill a year before the epidemic, provld. ing for the screening of all the cisterns, so that the mosquitoes might not spread abroad and also for the destruction by oil of the incestc in open pools. The total cost would hardly have exceeded $200 GOO. But there was no yellow fever in the city then; the public had recovered from it's latest scare; and the bill was voted down with derision. I suppose the say ing of that s200 600 cost New Orleans some SAC, ,001, 900 or $50 000, GOO.
 "Seldom does southern state discover yellow fever within its own borders. It ;s always Mississippi that finds the in lection in New Orleans, and Louisiana that finds 1t in Galveston. This appar- ently curious condition of affairs is ex- plicable readily enough on the ground that no state wishes to discover the germ in it's own veins, but is quite willing, for commercial reasons, to point out the tacillus in the system of its neghbor. In 1897 Texas was infected pretty wide ly with yellow fever; but pressure on the boards of health kept them from re- porting 1t for what 1t was. In light cases they called it dengue or breakbone fever. Now, dengue has this short-coming: that people do not die of it. Disobliging suffer-
 CTS from the alleged 'dengue began to fill up the cemeteries, thereby embarrass ing the local authorities until one of the health officers had a brilliant idea. When they die he said, we'll call 1t maarial fever And as such it went upon the records. Two recalcitrant members of tha Galveston health board reported certain extremely definite cases as yellow fever. They were forced to resign and the re-
 mainder of the board passed resolutions declaring that there was no yellow fever. there never had been any yellow fever, and there never would be any yellow fever as long as they held their jobs CT words to that effect. San Antonio also had the epidemic; so much of 1t that the mail service was suspended; but noth- l ing worse than dengue was permitted to go on the records. Later a Marine Hos
 pital Service surgeon was sent by the l government to investigate and report on ] the Texas situation. He told the truth i as he found it and became exceedingly i unpopular. Lynching was one of the mildest things they were going to do to 1 him in Texas And all this time while Texas was strenuously claiming freedom from the yellow plague, her emissaries were discovering cases in New Orleans that the local authorities there had some how careessly overlooked. The game of quarantine, as played by the health au- 1 thorities of the far southern states, and 1 played for money stakes, if you please,
 s not an edifying spectacle in twentieth century civilization"