The Yellow Fever | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 17, 1878

The Yellow Fever.

THE frightful ravages of the great epidemic still progress in the South. There has not yet been sufficient change in the weather to cause any perceptible abatement of the disease, in fact in some localities the number of cases and deaths is reported to be on the increase. In New Orleans on the 12th instant, 40 deaths were reported and 203 new cases. To that date the cases numbered 11,537, and deaths, 3,490. At Baton Rouge the same date, 57 new cases were returned to the authorities, and in some other parts of the State, there was not only an increase of numbers but the disease was assuming a most malignant form. Sad reports also come from various localities in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Memphis, Tenn., has been particularly marked by the plague. A gentleman in San Francisco recently received the following account of the state of affairs in Memphis, in a private letter:—

"Newspaper accounts give no idea of the horrors that surround us. No words can overestimate the facts. The force on the newspapers is so small they can give no idea of the true state of affairs, and the worst we can picture will not equal the terrible facts. The hand that now writes these lines may to-morrow be stiff beneath the soil of Elmwood. It now seems as if in a couple of weeks more the city would have to be abandoned, as it really looks as if it would not require more than that to annihilate the brave band of physicians and nurses and others who are facing the dreadful monster. Recruits from other sections fall almost as soon as they arrive. Out of about 7,000 who are now in the city, it is estimated there are 4,500 sick. Two hundred and eight died on the 4th; 204 died on the 9th, and these do not include the deaths in the suburbs. The saddest part of the story is that the disease is now making fearful headway all through the suburbs. May God in his great mercy stay the destroying angel and shorten these days of sorrow and death."