Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1911-08-23
PELLAGARA VICTIM SHUT OUT.
Rejected by Hospitals, Sufferer Must
Await End at Home.
(Atlanta Journal, 1Sth.)


have died and few recovered, and
for which science SO far has found
no cure. With an outlook perfectly
blank. knowing that your days are
numbered, your head is bowed with
an inexpressible awe"
Such are the thoughts of John II.
johnson, Of % Gaskill street, VIC
tim of pellagra. Mr.. Johnson is
well educated man, who has held
high station in life and commanded
good salary in his time. Now his
health Is broken, his pockets empty,
his hand weak, and his mind strain
ed by terrible thoughts-for the
dread pellagra holds him fast in its
iron grip.
But even that Is not the worst. He
has wife and two little children,
Frank, two years old, and Ernest,
ten months old. Since there is no
place he can go for treatment, no
haven where he can find refuge in
his distress, he is forced to live in
the house with his wife and children.
The wife already shows slight symp-
tom* Of the disease. Some physi-
clans say it is contagious and some
say 1t Is not-the disease is not yet
| understood. That leaves, then, the
dread uncertainty which causes Mr..
johnson to eXclaim:
And then when you have two lit
u oh Il 1ND D1xs
ders for support, and when you see
out of your own misery the threat
ening doom Of pellagra hanging over
their innocent heads, it fills your
mind with a great rebellious feeling.
You want to blame society for fur
nishing no asylums to which you can
flee
The Grady Hospital has refused to
take his case, and similar opes, be-
cause they say 1t is incurable. The
Home for lncurables refuses because
they say the disease develops in
sanity. So there you are-or rather,
there John Johnson is-sick, desert.
| ed, an outcast Of society. Many of
| the first class sanitariums also re-
fuse to accept such cases, because
they are afraid the disease is con-
tagious. There has been found one,
however, that offered to accept him
for $25 a week-which was, Of
course, prohibitory to one of his cir
cumstances.
Wife Undaunted.
The city warden, the Inman Park
Episcopal church and the Associated
Charities have all rendered slight
| assistance to the family within the
| last few weeks. They have given
food and money and medical atten-
ton, but the doctor they sent has
been unable to give the slightest re-
lief to the suffering man. Unwilling
| to live on charity alone as long as
she is not borne down by the disease
herself, Mrs. Johnson began work
Wednesday morning in the cotton
| mill near their home at Is cents a
day, in order to help sustain her lit
| tie boys and ease her husbands
| days.
Last Monday there died from pei
lagra at II Gaskill street, only five
doors away from the Johnsons, a
man named w. w. Maxey, leaving
his wife, who also has pellaera, and
three children. If there had been a
sanitarium in Atlanta to which he
could have gone his life might have
been heightened and his wife at least
might have been spared the disease.
The Johnson case is remarkably
similar.
| City's Pellagara Deaths.
Since January 1st 81 people have
died in Atlanta from pellagara, 3S
white people and l3 negroes. The
majority died at their homes with
out treatment, though a few died in
| hospitals.
| Johnson Offers Self.
The anxiety Of Mr.. Johnson to be
Of any possible service to the world
in its effort to analyze and under
stand pellaga." is impressive.
81 am willing" he said Wednes-
day afternoon to a reporter sitting on
the steps Of his Gilapidated little
home, "to deed my body aftcr ] am
dead to any doctor or any medical
school that desires to study the ma
ture and cause of pellagra. They
might make some discovery in dis
sccting and studying my body that
| III l.,
terwards of suffering death from