The soil of the city is composed of clay, sand, | charge; no bursting out of a thunder-storm; no copious rain; no interruption of the intertropical heat; even the south-southeast breeze, usually so regular and strong, was, in this year, rarer and slighter." and vegetable mould; the smaller hills being made up almost entirely of clay with here and there a nucleus of granite. These hills were once islands in an ancient sea, but nature first formed an alluvial marsh which art then filled For several years physicians had observed a up with a sufficient quantity of earth from the change in the type of the diseases of the city. hills to make a foundation for houses. This They had become far more malignant. Still filling has been accomplished without any regard no Yellow Fever made its appearance till Deto the sanitary necessities of the population. cember 28th, 1849, and it is generally believed There is scarcely any water-shed or declivity that this was its first invasion of the Brazilian for drainage, so that at the distance of a thou-capital. The first cases occurred in the persons sand yards from the shore, Campo de Santa of northern sailors, who had been living in the Anna is only five feet and a half above the level neighborhood of the water in the lower part of of the sea. The streets are narrow, the paving defective, the scavenger department almost totally neglected. The porous soil retains all manner of filth; the inhabitants do not hesitate to throw out the refuse of their houses and the police rarely take the trouble to remove it. Pent up between the mountains and the sea, subjected to the perpetual blaze of a tropical sun, this marshy plain can hardly fail to be both hot and moist. Its former average annual temperature was 73° and the air was loaded with vapor. In this respect its climate has been undergoing an unfavorable change of late years. The average annual temperature has increased 2.11° of Fahrenheit's thermometer; the average humidity is double that of Paris. The rains also have become less frequent, and this, as well as the increase of temperature, has been attributed to the clearing of the forests in the interior and in the neighborhood of the city. Formerly, by two or three o'clock in the afternoon the mountain-tops would be darkened with thunder-clouds, which soon swept over the city and poured down torrents of rain to cool the burning streets. So common were these evening showers, tradition informs us, that fifty years ago friends used to part from one another to meet again after the afternoon's thundergust. This regularity has entirely disappeared, and the number of these storms greatly diminished. The clouds gather round the mountains and hover over the city, but instead of sending down refreshing showers, they check the radiation from the earth, and retain the heated vapor. This hot, close, damp air is exceedingly oppressive. It rapidly exhausts the nervous energy and prostrates the strength of all who are shut up in it. Dr. Lallemant tells us that this sort of heat was very common in 1849 and 1850, and that these thunder-storms almost entirely ceased. "It is true that the mountain-tops were frequently hidden by thunder-clouds; it is true that lightning-flashes sometimes reached us, and that we heard the very distant rollings of thunder; but an impenetrable barrier seemed to have been raised in the plains on the other side of the bay, and however heavy thunder there was on the mountain-tops, however many whole weeks of copious rain there were up there, the city and the vicinity were in the greatest apparent tranquillity of nature, the tranquillity of a cemetery. No wind preceding an electric dis city. The disease soon spread through the vicinity, at first slowly, but afterward more rapidly. It seemed to make as regular approaches as a besieging army. At first it drew a cordon round the city along the beaches, and then, as if sure of its prey, suddenly advanced by many avenues to the centre of the capital. It made no distinction of age, sex, nor condition, but attacked all indiscriminately. In many houses not a single occupant remained alive. It was not, however, equally fatal to all classes. The blacks and mixed races nearly all recovered, but the people of pure European blood suffered terribly. Acclimation diminished the liability to death. The new-comers were the principal victims; and the more healthy the climate from which they came, the more recent their arrival, the fuller they were of health and strength and blood, the more certainly and the more fatally did the pestilence strike them. A considerable number of French and Italians died. Certain classes of those nations were chiefly attacked. There was some time during which not a single vender of plaster statuary was seen, no seller of pans and kettles, no rainy-weather-hat peddlers. The Italian opera was closed, and some members of the company will never be heard again. A company of posturers and equestrians was cruelly ravaged, so that the horses were almost the only creatures that escaped death. It appears to me that artists and priests of the temple of the Muses were the very worst sufferers, doubtless in consequence of the misery that accompanies artistic and poetic life in Rio de Janeiro. Commerce also contributed her quota of patients and deaths. There were commercial houses which, for a longer or shorter period, were entirely closed. "I am the only one in the establishment at this moment not sick." Thus wrote, one day, a book-keeper of a German house, and in a short time afterward he himself died. Several members of foreign legations died; death entered the Chamber of Deputies and the Council of the Emperor. During the months of March, April, and May the disease was at its height. The usual terror-the suspension of business, the hush of the streets, the hurry of the few agitated passers-by, revealed the presence of pestilence. The dead had become so numerous that the bells were no longer tolled; even the bell which accompanied the host through spectators of the scene fled from the place in the streets was mute. The rites of worship in great alarm. "One day," says the physician the churches were suspended; "every thing was we have already so often quoted, "I saw a boat suspended but death." "The corpses," says Dr. with four sailors, who brought a fifth as a paLallemant, could no longer be contained in tient to the island of Bom-Jesus. On the way the churches; and I shall never forget the sad the four rowers were very much diverted, when impression I felt when I sometimes encountered suddenly one of them let go one of the oars, a perfect line of funeral cortéges proceeding and cried out, 'I have the fever!' He shivalong the road to Catumby; when I saw car-ered with cold, and in place of returning with riages returning in shameless disorder, and in a great hurry to go and seek more customers; for in those days men speculated even in death, and undertakers profited by the general calamity." The alarm was aggravated by an ill-judged order prohibiting the publication of the daily number of deaths. This was intended to quiet the public mind, but it had the directly contrary effect. The imagination exaggerated the mortality, and the gloom of ignorance magnified the gigantic limbs of the pestilence. While the disease was thus ravaging the city, it was in like manner spreading through the shipping in the port. Dr. Lallemant, who had charge of the marine hospital at the island of Bom-Jesus, gives a dreary list of vessels which were represented in his wards; and adds, "it was the saddest congress of nations that could be seen; a conflict of nearly all the languages of Europe." One-half of his patients died; and he attributes the mortality to the condition in which the patients were when brought to him. Some died in the boat on their way to the hospital, others immediately after their arrival. his companions, he too remained as a patient at the island of Bom-Jesus, and died a few days afterward." It is a fact worthy of notice that vessels loaded with coal suffered more than others. The disease continued to rage in spite of the solemn religious processions, whose torches reddened the night air, and lighted up the jewels on the images of the invocated saints borne reverently at the head of the column. In eight months, from the first of January to the last of August, it had swept into eternity, according to the official reports, 3827 souls. These figures are considered by eye-witnesses entirely too low. Dr. Lallemant estimates the number of cases at 100,000, and the deaths at 10,000. It is remarkable that those persons who fled to the healthier air of the mountains while their systems were saturated with the poison almost invariably sickened and died. During the subsequent years yellow fever continued to prevail in Rio, though with varying severity. Thus 475 died of it in 1851, 1943 in 1852, 853 in 1853, and only four in 1854. From Rio the fever commenced its desolating march northward. Late in 1851 it reached the colonies on the northern coast of South America, and in 1852 fell with great fury on the West India Islands. The year 1853 will long be re islands of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Early in that year yellow fever attacked the southern and western shores and the islands of that heated expanse of water, and was so general and so violent that medical men of experience in epidemics predicted that it would make the circuit of the Gulf. So indeed it did, and a sad and terrible circuit it was. Our limits do not permit us to particularize minutely the details of that fearful year. We therefore pass over the epidemics in the southern parts of the sea, and commence with a description of the scourge as it devastated New Orleans. One of the most unhappy circumstances attending the epidemic in the ships was the impossibility of escaping to a healthier climate. The pestilence barred their exit, as if to consume their inmates at its leisure. One English ship had three captains in succession, two hav-membered by the dwellers on the shores and ing died. It was impossible, in most cases, to get hands. Among the few crews who could be got together, the disease broke out as soon as the men began to work. Several ships, which weighed anchor and sailed a short distance, were compelled to return on this account. One brig was found drifting out at sea. The captain and pilot were dead, the crew sick, and no one knew how to navigate the vessel. Many sad incidents, of course, occurred. A physician, on his way to attend the sick at a distant point of the harbor, was hailed by a Danish schooner. The captain and his wife-both young and only a few months married-were sick, and there were not enough sailors well to send ashore for medicines. It was necessary to hail another vessel in order to get men for the purpose. three days the captain was dead; sympathizing friends carried the dying wife ashore, and in a few hours she too perished. In That city is famous for its insalubrity. A comparison of its mortality with that of the other large seaboard cities of the United States reveals this at once. Their average mortality is a little less than 24 per cent. annually; whereas that of the metropolis of Louisiana, for The attack of the disease was sometimes re- the six years preceding the great epidemic of markably sudden. On the Custom-house quay 1853, was 63 per cent. Its situation is well a Hamburg bark anchored and commenced dis-known. Lying upon a low alluvial plain, becharging. Every one on board took sick on the low the level of the Mississippi River at high same day. About the same time a French ship water, it is surrounded by extensive undrained anchored at the same quay. After a few min- swamps, and has itself been reclaimed from a utes' work the sailors all took sick, and some marsh. Its rich, alluvial soil contains great quantities of vegetable mould, and is so damp that water can be obtained any where at the depth of a few feet. There are a number of cemeteries within the city limits, which greatly taint the air. The drainage is imperfect, and scavenger duty very badly performed. The open lots are also sources of disease, being, as they are, the receptacles for the offal of the surrounding houses. During the year 1853 the city was in a worse sanitary condition than usual; it was not only filthier, but there had been much disturbance of the original soil, a dangerous operation in all Southern cities. The population was also more susceptible, there being a larger number than usual of people from the North, and of Europeans not yet acclimated. by subsequent examination. Be that as it may, it is certain that the disease originated, as usual, about the water, and among the ships. The first cases occurred late in May. The disease went on languidly during the month of June, and was not fully established till the second week in July. From that time it raged most frightfully until November. It was at its height in August, during which month the unfavorable climatic influences had also reached their maximum. This month it swept away 5269 souls. The population of the city remaining behind during the course of the epidemic is estimated at 125,000. Of these, 29,020 were attacked, and 8101 died of this terrible fever. Evidences of its unusual malignity were its attacking negroes, children, and natives, and its wide-spread devastation of the surrounding country. Its influence was manifest upon both vegetable and animal life. Seed failed to germinate, and young plants, a few inches above ground, were seized with a sudden blight. Fungi and mould were uncommonly abundant, fruit rotted on the trees, the fish died in great quantities along the shores of the Gulf, the poultry perished in the barn-yards, the tame birds in their cages. The wild animals fled from. their accustomed haunts deep into the forests, warned by instinct of the poison that filled the air. The carrion that putrefied along the shores of the streams and in the open fields could not lure the vultures and carrion-crows from their hiding-places in the woods. Every thing which could escape abandoned the infected spots. To these unfavorable circumstances was soon added a most oppressive state of the atmosphere. The winter was mild, the spring warm, and the summer intensely hot. In May the average temperature was nearly 74°, the average dewpoint 67°, the winds southerly and easterly, and the rains slight. Still the air was very damp; an unusual prevalence of mould was observed, and the heat was uncommonly depressing. During this month there were 600 cases of the fever. In June the average temperature had risen to 81°, and the dew-point to 73°, and with this change came an increased mortality. The weather resembled that so eloquently described by Chateauvieux: "No visible signs mark the existence or approach of this pestiferous air. The sky is as pure, the verdure as fresh, the air as tranquil, as in the most healthy region. The aspect of the elements is such as should inspire the most In many of the smaller towns the mortaliperfect confidence; and it is impossible to ex- ty was terrific. At Providence the population press the horror which one experiences, on dis- was reduced by flight to about four hundred. covering that all this is deception; that he is in Of these 330 sickened and 165 died. At Vicksthe midst of dangers, of which no indication burg it also raged terribly. In a reduced popuexists, and that, with the soft air he is breath-lation of about 3000 there occurred 2100 cases ing, he may be inhaling a poison destructive to life." In reality, this very tranquillity is a warning to him who can read the signs of the time. It indicates excessive radiation and a stagnant condition of the atmosphere. During July and August the rains became truly tropical. Every afternoon they poured down in torrents, soaking the earth and saturating anew the filth which had dried during the day. There was, however, nothing refreshing in these copious tor rents. The air was hotter and closer than before, and the pools which collected in the gutters were mantled with a slimy pellicle through which bubbles of fetid gas arose. Calms were unusually common, and the atmosphere was close, suffocating, and inelastic. The disease was supposed to have been imported from Rio, but a careful investigation of the facts led the sanitary commission to believe that the hypothesis was utterly without foundation. It began, indeed, among persons who had been subjected to the foul air of ships; and though some of the scavengers employed in cleaning these vessels detected what they considered marks of black vomit about the hold and hospital, their suspicions were not verified and 500 deaths. In Jackson, Mississippi, out of 690 who remained 350 sickened and 112 died. On the 13th of July, the first case occurred at Mobile. The disease gradually extended throughout the town without regard to locality. It even invaded the surrounding country, and extended along the lines of communication to towns which had never been attacked before. In some of these it was very severe. In Mobile, the Board of Health ceased to report on the 26th of October, though scattering cases continued to occur throughout the months of November and December. The entire number of deaths from yellow fever was 1191, out of a population of about 18,000. Old physicians remarked that the disease manifested a malignity unknown since 1819. During this same year Philadelphia lost 128 inhabitants by yellow fever. In 1854 the disease had advanced still farther northward. Savannah, Augusta, and Charleston suffered severely. In Baltimore, also, a few deaths occurred, but the disease was confined almost exclusively to two small streets near the water at the lower end of Fell's Point, so that it Our space suffices only for a description of the epidemic in Charleston. excited no alarm and attracted little attention. | by the salt spray, that they were stripped as bare as in mid-winter. They soon budded out again in both leaf and flower. After this, there was a marked increase in the epidemic. It had previously been confined to strangers, but now it attacked natives. It was noticed with astonishment and alarm that even negroes, who had been born in Charleston, died of this disease. One case is recorded of an old negress, eightyfour years of age, who had never left the city, and who had passed unharmed through three epidemics, and yet perished of black vomit. The commercial metropolis of South Carolina is situate upon a narrow and level tongue of land between two rivers. Extensive mud flats are exposed for several hours to the influence of the sun at low tide. The area of the building lots in the city is continually increased by land which has been reclaimed from the sea in these swampy levels. The process hitherto adopted to effect this object is diametrically at war with the principles of hygiene. The lots are filled up with animal and vegetable matters, chiefly with rice chaff. Such porous materials can afford only a very permeable soil, through which the tides can readily soak. Many of the city lots are below the level of the streets, so that water stagnates in them, saturating the putrescible materials which make up the bulk of their soil. As might be expected, yellow fever is peculiarly malignant and fatal in these low, unwholesome, half-drained swamps. On the 9th of September the Roper Hospital was opened for the reception of patients, and by the evening of that day fourteen were under treatment. The beds were speedily filled. On the twentieth, the influx was so rapid that for a time it was impossible to find accommodations for those who sought admittance. The epidemic lasted till the 25th of November. The entire mortality was 612. Of these, 458 were foreigners, 119 natives of the United States, but not of the city of Charleston, and 44 natives of the city. Of the latter but three were adults. In 1854 all the local elements of disease were unusually numerous and active. A great quantity of mud flat had been reclaimed in the ordi- The next year, 1855, is a sad one in the annary manner, by filling up with rice chaff and |nals of the old commonwealth of Virginia, for other rubbish. This made soil was alternately two of her cities were sorely afflicted during the flooded by the tide and exposed to the hot rays burning heats of its summer and fall. We need of the sun till its effluvia became so disgusting only mention Norfolk and Portsmouth to call that the houses in the neighborhood were closed up to the memory of the whole country images by their occupants. In the western portion of of woe and sounds of lamentation. The deep the city, the contempt for sanitary regulations fraternal interest felt by the nation in the cahad been carried so far that the lots had been lamity which ravaged those unhappy towns, is filled with offal and garbage. The meteorolog- our only apology for dwelling somewhat minuteical conditions still further favored the develop-ly upon the history of their sorrows. ment of disease. The heat was the most intense and oppressive which had been experienced for years. Sun-strokes were frequent. The customary evening sea-breeze failed, so that the nights were hot and sultry. On one occasion, on Sullivan's Island, a summer resort directly exposed to the ocean, the thermometer at midnight stood at 93°. The average for the four months of June, July, August, and September was above 80°, and the average dew-point above 72°. The winds were light, and the rains infrequent. These two cities are situate opposite each other, on the banks of the Elizabeth River, a short, wide, and deep estuary, opening into James River not far above its junction with the Chesapeake Bay. The shores of the Bay, at this its southern extremity, like the entire Atlantic coast, from Cape May down, are low and flat. In this particular spot they are also marshy. The upper border of the Great Dismal Swamp is not more than eight miles distant. Norfolk is a little higher than PortsDuring the month of July several vessels ar-mouth, but not sufficiently elevated to be free rived from infected ports. They were reported from the general dampness of the entire neighto have lost patients at sea with yellow fever, borhood. Every where water is very near the and two of them sent to the hospital men labor-surface, and may be obtained at a depth of four ing under this disease. About the same time vessels arriving from the North hauled in to the same wharf at which these infected ships were or had been lying. Yellow fever broke out on board of them, and soon spread into the city. On the 19th of August the existence of this disease was officially announced in the weekly report of the Board of Health. At first it confined itself to the low and filthy parts of the city, especially to the Irish and German population. On the 7th and 8th of September there was a furious gale, which caused great injury to the shipping. The water rose very high, and did more damage than the wind. The trees were lashed so furiously by the wind, and so beaten or six feet; and, in some places, at even less. Gosport, which is a southern suburb of Portsmouth, is separated from that town by a marsh about a quarter of a mile in width. This is bridged at its eastern end by a wooden causeway, now well advanced in decay. On the north side of Portsmouth is a marshy run, extending southwardly through the city, and crossed by wooden bridges. The city is thus nearly enveloped by marshes, which are covered with logs and various forms of vegetable matter. These, together with the decaying weeds and animals of the marshes themselves, reeking under a southern sun, can not fail to send up deadly emanations into the atmosphere. The dead level of the city is a serious obstacle to drainage. | believed. The engineer is quoted as saying that The pools of water which remain after every rain in the unpaved streets, together with the garbage which is allowed to accumulate upon the lots and in the streets, are further sources of disease. The docks, too, are described as being very offensive during that fatal summer. That nothing may be wanting to increase the disasters of a pestilence, this unhealthy waterfront is bordered by "thickly-set, ill-ventilated, overcrowded, dilapidated frame tenements, which, even in spite of the dampness of the soil, are provided with cellars and underground basements. These are occupied by the poorest and filthiest of the population, and are necessarily surrounded by all manner of impurities. "Not a human being of either sex, or of any age, who remained within this precinct, so far as I could learn," says an eye-witness, "escaped the fever; and most of them died." The sanitary condition of Norfolk is better than that of Portsmouth. It is, as we said before, a little more elevated, and it has a slight slope toward the river, which gives it greater facilities for drainage. It also has the advantage of possessing many paved streets. Still much complaint was made, before the breaking out of the fever, concerning the unwholesome condition of the city. Some of the docks were said to be abominably fetid, and back alleys and vacant lots were pointed out as reeking with impurities. To these local causes were superadded the usual atmospheric conditions. The weather was hot and moist, the thermometer at mid-day ranging at 94° in the shade. There was also noticed the sultriness which so often ushers in pestilence, the absence of high winds, the unusual rapidity of decomposition in animal and vegetable substances. The weather for the months of June, July, and August is described by an eye-witness as "damp, close, hot, and disagreeable." yellow fever prevailed to such an extent, shortly after she left St. Thomas, that difficulty was experienced in working the ship. Surreptitious burials are rumored to have taken place from on board of her by night while she was lying at quarantine, and fever was believed to be making sad havoc with her crew. Be that as it may, it is certain that a fraud was perpetrated on the health officer when the health of the vessel was represented to be good. On the day after her arrival at Gosport one of her crew was sent to the naval hospital, where he died in a few hours of black vomit. This man, who was perfectly rational at the time of his admission, told the surgeon of the hospital that he had been taken sick on the 17th, two days before leaving quarantine. It is also certain that the earliest wellauthenticated cases of the disease broke out in her immediate neighborhood, and that many of them occurred in persons who were engaged on board of this ill-fated steamer.* On the 5th of July, a boiler-maker, who had been working at her machinery, was taken sick, and on the 8th he was a corpse. The attending physician entertaining some doubt as to the true character of the disease, requested an eminent naval surgeon to examine the body. Closing the nostrils, and pressing upon the chest of the dead man, the surgeon forced from the mouth a gush of the unmistakable black vomit, to the horror and dismay of the by-standers. Several other cases followed in quick succession, six of them being hands belonging to the steamer. It was useless to attempt concealment, and the presence of pestilence was publicly acknowledged by the Board of Health. By the 24th of July twenty-seven cases and eight deaths had occurred in Gosport, all of them in the immediate vicinity of Page and Allen's ship-yard. The workmen fled from the infected spot, leaving a large ship unfinished upon the stocks. The clatter of hammers gave place to a painful silence, and the idle saw and adze rusted in the unoccupied sheds. The authorities hastened to board up the infected spot, and to interdict all intercourse between it and the still healthy portions of the town. These precautions, how The steamer Benjamin Franklin arrived on the 7th of June from St. Thomas, an island of the West Indies, in which yellow fever was prevailing at the time of the vessel's departure. She was boarded by the health officer, who was informed by the captain that there was no dis-ever, were taken too late. Like an unconquerease on board of her. Two deaths were acknowledged as having occurred at sea, but were attributed by the captain one to diseased heart, the other to exhaustion. The steamer was kept at quarantine for twelve days, and no case of infectious disease on board of her having come to the knowledge of the Board of Health, she was allowed to pass up into the harbor, on condition that her hold should not be broken out. As she needed repairs, she hauled in to Page and Allen's ship-yard, where she remained for nineteen days. There her captain violated his pledge by breaking out her hold, and pumping out an extremely offensive bilge-water. Since the fatal epidemic which followed the arrival of this pestilential ship, strange stories concerning her have been circulated and generally able flame, the disease overleaped the barriers, raged along the wooden tenements on the bank of the river, sparing none of their squalid denizens, and destroying three out of every five. It soon began to spread inward to the town, and late in July it crossed the river to Norfolk. It broke out first in Barry's Row, a collection of frame tenements, sweltering in filth, and inhabited, as such places usually are, by uncleanly and indigent people. To this miserable shelter a number of the terrified occupants of the plaguesmitten hovels of Portsmouth had betaken them * A case of yellow fever was said to have been seen in Gosport on the 24th of June, but there is some doubt of its true character. At any rate, it occurred seven days after the sailor was attacked, and three days after he died. |