HORRORS OF THE YELLOW FEVER.

Otago Witness, Issue 1418, 25 January 1879, Page 23

HORRORS OF THE YELLOW FEVER.

The past year has witnessed many a scene of horror, but it is doubtful whether any* thing much more terrible has baen seen than the spectacle of disease, desolation and death presented by tlie city of Memphis, in the United States,, which has lately been devastated by yellow fever. Accounts by physicians, nurses, and correspondents of the American newspapers agree as to the frightful condition of affairs in that city. The peculiar odor of the disease can, it is stated, be detected at three miles distance from the place. All business is suspended, the banks only remaining open an hour a day for the handling of remittances from abroad. All the drug stores but three are closed. The only vehicles seen in the street are doctors' carriages and dead-carts. At night fires of wood and tar burn in front of houses here and there. These are death signals, meaning that the remains of the fever victims are lying within, waiting for the dead-waggons to call. A. black or red cloth is the death-sign by day ; but many die unsigualled and unattended. Persons attacked suddenly, being unable from weakness or delirium to call assistance, die all alone, and their bodies are sooner or later discovered. This occurred the other day in the case of a lawyer named Strickland, who died in his office in the Masonic buildings. Vagabonds frequently crawl into deserted houses and never go out alive ; others are found dead in the open air. The work of burial is done hurriedly. The rude coffins are placed side by side, and piled one on another in trenches. The name, if known, is written on the lid. There are no funeral Berviceg. Young children form fully twenty-five per cent, of the dead. The physicians refuse to work harmoniously, so that accurate statistics of the deaths cannot bo obtained. Tho only hotel open is the Peabody, and that is a peat-house, seventeen of the inmates being down with the fever at one time. The city government is thoroughly disorganised, and Memph's ia all but in tho power of a rabble. The population hag been reduced by fright and deaths from 40,000 to 3500, ons half of whom are sick. In the meantime negroes and tramps have flocked in, braving the fever for the sake of what they can get by robbery. At first they extorted enormous pay for slight services, but soon refused to do any work at all. Reckless bands of meu and women wander through the streets, breaking into houses and stores; unhindered, and would sack the city if they were numerous enough.