"DYING BY HUNDREDS"

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 161, 2 April 1919, Page 7

"DYING BY HUNDREDS"

THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE IN CAPE TOWN GRAPHIC DETAILS The following graphic details of the terrible sufferings of Capo Town from the influenza scourge are contained in a private letter from the head sister of the New Somerset Hospital, which has beon received in this country:—

We have had a most terrible time in Cape Town, and, in fact, all over South Africa with Spanish influenza. It hasupset everything;' the rush in Cape Town has been so dreadful that every one who was not ill has been.worked to thelimit. At first we laughed and joked about the " *ilu." but in a few days people began to be ill by tho dozens; tho sickness was very violent, very short, and very fatal. Before the first week was out they wero dying as if with a plague, by the scores, and later by tha hundreds. The deaths started at 20 a day, and before many days were over mounted up to 500 and even 600 a day. In two weeks GOOO people died, and Capo Town was like a city of the dead. In the hospital hero the servants took ill first; then all the laundry people, then porters and ward .maids; last ot all tho doctors and nursing staff. The people died in tho streets; at one time big covered wagons patrolled the streets _to pick up the dead. A house-to-house visitation was started, and the most terrible state of affairs was discovered; whole families stricken, the dead arid living in the same .beds, no food in the house, no one able to crawl about to ■'et it; hundreds of people starving because thev could not get.out to.get foods nil delivery ■ carts stopped, no ono to drive them; shops shut, tha people being ill; business houses shut up; trains and trams stopped runnings theatres bioscopes, and churches all empty and closed. It was like the Great Plague of "in Hie great cemetery six miles out of Cape Town there wore no people to dm the "raves; peoplo carried their friends and "relatives from a motor-car to the plots,-and had to dig the graves themselves; often they were so weak that thev could only dig two or three feet deep, and as they turned to get the body they had brought other people, caine and threw the bodies of their friends into the gravo others had dug; fights ensued, and the scenes were terrible. No clergymen or priests to bury anyone. At the height of the plague there were no coffins" and tho people, rich and pool', were buried in blankets. The bodies turned black some hours before death, and the stench from them a day, or eveu two days, before thev died was like, a pestilence Relief parties wero organised, and the military were called out to dm "raves. Doctors and nurses worked till thev dropped, and others, to keep themselves well, never went to their homes but slept somewhere else with the door locked, as otherwise they could get no 6 Telephones wero not used-nearlv all tho exchange people ill, and the doctors disconnected their 'phones as, otherwise, the thing never stopped ringing, the town-and suburbs were portioned out to the doctors who kept well, and it they fell ill that district was left without a doctor. , , , In tho hospital hero we were crowded out and all the staffs short. On night duty it was terrible; at times we had ■100' patients, and several limes 1 only had 10 night nurses on duty. My nurses worked like, heroes; never can I: tell how fully they lived up to tho highest tradition's of their profession, \oung nurses, most of thorn, wo were nil workin" at more than our best,.tho dead and dying all round, and death in a terrible form too, many shrieking to the last m a terrible delirium. Yet my nurses never faltered; (hey knew it was almost impossible for them to escape getting it; still, steady, brave, loyal girls, thev never failed me, and at times 1 had to ask I such big things of them; none ever said "No." Night after night some of them I got ill and had to bo forced "to bed; when there wero no others left to lako their places those remaining on duty dm doublo worlc. How wo did it I do not know. Out of a staff of 110, only 12 or H escaped tho disease. All the doctors were down at one time or another; we lost one doctor and one of the porters. Although mnn.v of the nursinir stall were verv near death, wo saved them all. Things' have eased down now, and what is Wt is u number of people suffering from tho effects of getting about 100 early; (hey have, developed a kind of chronic pneumonia. Tho nurses are neai*lv nl! on duty again now, and the past six weeks is like a bud dream that could surely never have been real.