Elmore County Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1910-1915, 1915-01-09


new kinds of germs became diseases
There were warnings. Soldervetzsky.
as early as 1929, told the bacteriolo-
gists that they had no guaranty against
some new disease, thousand times
more deadly than any they knew,
arising and killing by the hundreds
of millions and even by the billion"
1t was at this point that Hare-Lip
rose to his feet, an expression of huge
contempt on his face.
"Granser," he announced, you
make me sick with your gable. Why
don't you tell about the Red Death?
II you amt going to, say so, an We'll
start back for camp"
The old man looked at him and
silently began to cry. The weak tears
of age rolled down his cheeks, and all
the feebleness of his eighty-seven
years showed In his grief-stricken
cauntenance.
"Sit down." Edwin counseled sooth.
ingly. "Granser's all right. He's just
gettin' to the Scarlet Death, amt you,
Granser? He's just goin' to tell us
about 1t right now. Sit down, Hare
Lip Go ahead. Granser,"
The old man wiped the tears away
on his grimy knuekles and took up
the tale In tremulous, piping voice
that soon strengthened al he got the
swing of the narrative.
1T was In the summer of 201S that
the plague came. I was twenty-seven
years old. and we'll do remember 1t.
Wireless dispatches"
Hare.Lip spat loudly his disgust,
and Granser FASTENED to make
amends.
I'VE talked through the air In
those days. thousands and thousands
of miles. And the word came of
strange disease that had broken out
in New York. There were seventeen
millions Of people living then In that
noblest city OF America. Nobody
thought anything about the news. 1t
was only a small thing. There had
been only few deaths. 1t seemed.
though, that they had died very quick
ly, and that one of the first signs of
the disease was the turning red of
the face and all the body. Within
twenty-four hours came the report of
the first case In Chicago. And on the
same day, 1t was made public that
London, the greatest city In the world
next to Chicago, had been secretly
fighting the plague for two weeks and
censoring the news dispatches-th
is, not permitting the word to go forth
to the rest of the world that London
had the plague.
It looked serious, but we In Cali
fornia, like everywhere else, were not
alarmed. We were sure that the
psychologists would find way to
overcome this new germ just as they
had overcome other germs In the past,
But the trouble was the astonishing
auickness with which this germ de,
5troyed human beings, and the fact
that it inevitably killed any human
body 1t entered, No one aver recov.
cred. There was the old Asiatic
cholera, when you might eat dinner
with we'll man in the evening, and
the next morning. IL you got up early
enough, you would see him being
hauled by your window in the death
cart. But this new plague was quick
er than that-much quicker. Prom
the moment of the first signs of 1t, a
man would be dead In an hour. Some
lasted for several hours. Many died
within ten or fifteen minutes of the
appearance of the first signs.
"The heart began to beat faster
and the heat of the body to increase.
Then came the scarlet rash, spread
ing like wildfire over the face and
body. Most persons never noticed
the increase In heat and heart
beat, and the first they knew
was when the scarlet rash came out
Usually, they had commissions at the
time of the appearance of the rash. But
these commissions did not last long and
were not very severe. II one lived
through them, he became perfectly
quiet, and only did he feel a numbness
swiftly creeping up his body from the
feet. The heels became numb first,
then the legs and hips, and when the
numbness reached as high as his heart
he died. They did not rave or sleep.
Their minds always remained cool and
calm up to the moment their hearts
numbed and stopped. And another
strange thing was the rapidity of de-
composition No sooner was a person
dead than the body seemed to fall to
pieces, to fly apart, to melt away even
as you looked at 1t. That was one OF
the reasons the plague spread SO rap
idly. All the billions Of germs in
corpse were so Immediately released.
"And II was because of all this that
the bacteriologists had so little chance
in fighting the germs. They were
killed in their laboratories even as
they studied the germs of the Scarlet
Death. They were heroes. AS fast as
they persisted, others stepped forth
and took their places 1t was in Lon.
don that they first isolated it. The