INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 April 1919, Page 5

INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC.

THEATRES AND AMUSEMENTS CLOSED IN SYDNEY. Eeoeived April 2, 8.40 p.m. Sydney, April 2. The Government lias adopted all the Medicui Council's recommendations, so that theatres and indoor amusements i.'ose io-.r'.'ht. The prospects of holding the Randwick Autumn meeting depends on the course of the epidemic in the next fortnight—Aus-N.Z. Cable Assn. "DYING BY HUNDREDS."

THE INFLUENZA SCOURGE IN CAPE TOWN.

The following graphic details of the terrible sufferings of Cape Town, from the influenza scourge are contained in a private letter from the head sister of the New Somerset Hospital which has been 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 has upset everything; the rush in Cape town has been so dreadful.that every one who was not 111 has been worked to the limit. At first we laughed and joked about the "flu", but in a few days people began to be ill by the dozens; the sickness was very violent, very start, and very fatal. Before the first week was out they were dying as if with a plague, by the scores, and later by the 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 6000 people died., and Cape Town was like a city of the dead. In the hospital here the servants took ill first; then all the laundry people, then porters and ward maids; last of all the doctors and nursing staff. The people died in the 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 and living in the 88819 beds, no food in the house, no one able' to crawl about to get it; hundreds of people starving because they could not get out to get food; all delivery carts stopped, no one to drive them; shop* shut, the people being ill; business houses shut up; trains and trams stopped running; theatres, bioscope®, and churches all empty and closed. It was like the Great Plague of London.

In the great cemetery six miles out of Cape Town there were no people to dig the graves; people carried their friends and relatives from a motor-ear to the plots, and had to dig the graves themselves; often they were m weak that they could only dig two or three feet deep. Rnd as the? turned to get the body they had brought other people came and threw the bodies of their friends into the grave 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 the people, rich and poor, were buried,in blankets The bodies'turned black some hours before death, and the stcncli from them a day, or even two days, before they died was like a pestilence. Belief parties were organised, and the military were called out to dig graves. Doctors and nurses' worked till they dropped, and others, to keep themselves well, never went to their homes, but slept somewhere else with the donr locked, as otherwise they could get no sleep.

. Telephones were not used—nearly all the 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 if they fell ill that district was left without ,i doctor.

In,the hospital here we were crowded out. and all The staffs short. On night duty it was terrible; at times we had 400 patients, and several times I only had 10 night nurses on duty. My nurses worked like heroes: never can I tell how fully'they lived up to the highest traditions of their profession. Young nurses, most of them, we were all workin" at more than our best, the dead and dying all round, and death in. a terrible form too, many shrieking to the last in a terrible delirium. Yet my nurses never faltered; they knew it was almost impossible for them to escape getting it: ftitl, steadv, brave, loyal girls, they never failed me. and at times I had to ask sueh big things of them: none ever m'A "No" after night some of them erot ill and had to be forced to bed; when there were no others left to take their places those remaining on duty di'l double work. Ho* we did it Ido not know. Out of a staff of 110, onlv 12 or 14 escaped the disease. All the doctors were,down at one time or another; we lost one doctor and one of the porters Although many of the nirr=hw? fttftf 1 " wstß very near death, wo saved iVm all.

Things have eased down now. mvi what is left is a number of people suffering from the effects of gettinw about too .parlv.; they have developed a kind of chronic pneumonia. The nurses nri» nearly all on duty again now, and the past six weeks is like a- bad dream that could surely never nave been real.