THE EPIDEMIC AT BUENOS AYRES.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 862, 16 September 1871, Page 3

THE EPIDEMIC AT BUENOS AYRES.

The yellow fever, which raged so fearfully during the early part of the year at Buenos Ayres, has now, happily, almost disappeared. The. germ of the disease was imported from Paraguay early in January, and up to the end of A pril its victims numbered 26,200, out of what was originally a population of about 200,000. When the disease became so fatal, a large proportion of the residents—all in fact who could afford to do so—removed from the city, so that the death-rate in proportion to the population was lately much larger than the above figures would lead to suppose. There is no mystery as to the cause of the fatal malady in a city populated as it was, and entirely without the most ordinary sanitary arrangements—no roads, no drainage, almost no pure water, no baths, and a system of cesspools which probably has no parallel in the history of civilisation. The climate is, perhaps, the finest in the world, and its beauty lulled the people into security, until the filth and the crowds of the city were ripe

and ready to receive and propagate the insidious disease. The Italians and n.-tf ives were the chief sufferers. These people live in a meagro way, hate soap and water, and do not know what ventilation means. A large number of the English tradesmen and semilabouring class were cut off, but it is worthy of observance that among the Basques, who are a,stalwart, jolly, cleanly, well living race, the mortality was insignificant.