THE YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC IN AMERICA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2540, 20 October 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC IN AMERICA.

« Tiikrk is alitnn in the southern States over the outbreak of that terrible epidemic, yellow fever, a disease that in srirae years has claimed many thousands of victims and almost depopulated flourishing towus and cities. Thus far the disease has not made severe ravages, and is pronounced a mild type ; happily, too, the season is pretty well advanced, as the frosts will be along before very many weeks, and with the frosts and accompanying cold weather yellow fever disappears altogether, and is heard of no more .until possibly in the following year, when the hot weather comes a</ain. The most rigid sanitary precautions have been taken, a quarantine having been everywhere established against the places where a single case lias been heard of, and in some instances where it has only been suspected large fires are kept going all night in the streets of the infected cities, as the fire is said to kill the germs of the disease. In some towns the city batteries of artillery keep up a rapid firing of blnnk cartridges, on the theory that the concession in the atmosphere prevents the spread of the dreaded malady. So much faith is attached to the concussion theory that the military authorities at Washington have ordered the commander of the fort at St. Augustine to send a detachment of United States artillery with guns and ammunition to Jacksonville, where the disease is raging. The scientific world will be interested in the result of the experiments, and if they Bhould prove successful it is possible that they may be applied to Asiatic cholera, when it next makes its appearance in the country.—Leader.