Show OUR OCR CUBAN LETTER june 1898 spanish bullets are not the only dansen our boys in cuba will have to encounter first and more to be feared them than all the guns of the enemy to Is pestilence that walseth in darkness one of the most noted yellow fever centers in the west indies ven even worse than havana Is santiago de cuba its bot aled up harbor being always a favorite abode of that dread disease and these midsummer mid summer months the very helgath heights of his harvest time but yellow jack so much talked about since this war began to is by no means the worst disease which will assail our brave men in cuba doctor barnner Bur the sanitary expert who lately left havana after having been several years employed there by the U S government says that of the spanish soldiers who died last year in cuba only died of yellow fever twelve thousand of them were carried off by dysentery and inflammation of the intestines and upwards of by malarial fever the disease which particularly afflicts the queen of the antilles in the order named as an to mortality are dysentery malarial and typhoid fever yellow fever smallpox small pox cholera and leprosy an eminent ancient medical authority suggests that unless we axe are extremely careful our cuban campat campaign may y result e as an disastrously as the me trench ench campaign in madagascar eight years av ago the french soldiers were all robust men and were cared for by the best military surgeons in the world but a very large proportion of them died from malaria the few who returned to paris being mostly consales cents cuba and porto rico are not unlike madagascar in climate the same fertile marshy soil filled with swamps and lying to the southeast of the main land surrounded by warm ocean currents everybody remembers the terrible mortality along the chagres chagares river in the days of when thousands of men took that route to california the journey across the hyphen of land which connects the two americas occupied only a week eek but so many died from the deadly miasmas miasmal of the flowery jungles that isthmian fever became known as an a distinct and fatal malady I 1 portions of cuba and portorico porto Port oRIco rico are no better today than was the isthmus of panama in 49 of course our oar army surgeons will administer quinine galore and think of the years it will take to get that poison out of the systems of t the he men the universal cuban custom of drinking strong black coffee unadulterated with milk Is as natural and as necessary as for sick cats to seek grass both being natures antidotes for certain ailments As to smallpox small pox every town in the west indies it Is continually ravaged by it and like grim death the loathsome disease has all seasons for his own and loves the shining mark of the anglo saxon the natives expect it as we do mumps and measles once in a lifetime life time and take no pains to check the spread of the disease by isolating patients nearly everybody you meet in cuba is more or less pitted and in footed houses public or private are not quarantined thorough vaccination is the only safeguard for the foreigner another unexpected bugaboo to ie glan ders dersa a disease which in our country Is confined to horses dr burgess inathe another r medical expert from the united states who has lived in cuba many years says that there were deaths last year from glanders in havana alone As to leprosy it is a common thing to see the scaly hand of a leper outstretched for alms and a very dangerous thing to handle public drinking cups shinplaster shin plaster currency or any article in common use among the poorer classes even the aristocrats are not exempt I 1 know a family ot of wealth and refinement in havana one of whose several children Is ie a leper the little sufferer is perhaps six years 0 old id a beautiful bluee blue e eyed girl whose face is yet untouched by the dreadful disease but her hands are scaly as the claws clams of a bird and the nails are dropping from the fingers she is allowed to sleep and play with the other children to handle the same toys and bath in the same tub nobody has the heart to insist upon taking the child from her parents and if he did there is no law to sustain him the lepers hospital in havana in charge of the eminent physician dr vidal de sotolongo y imrch has few if any su superiors in the world I 1 have visited it more than once and seen the several hundred poor creatures male and female black and white all clean well fed and well cared for lookin positively happy in their affliction yet there are many more mostly beggars wandering unrestricted restricted around the streets of havana there theire beine no spanish law to compel the confinement of lepers and nobody whose bus business it is to induce them to take refuge in the hos hospital ital As won soon as uncle siam sam has rescued the queen of the antilles fr from om the clutch of spain he will have a harder task to make her clean enough for the society of civilized nations and the sanitary invasion will be as expensive as the military but if neglected will eventually cost more american lives than the war soon as hostilities are ended our commerce will of course be greatly stimulated free trade absolute commercial reciprocity and all that sort of thing being established with the independence pen dence of cuba but work costing millions of dollars should first be accomplished complis camplis hed lied in the cities and harbors under existing unsanitary conditions in cuba intimate relation lont with her thousands would yearly slay tho thousands and on the other hand the enforcement of necessary quarantine would be a serious drawback to trade habana a perfect hotbed hot bot bed of at disease planted at out our back door so to say should be first attended to uncle samuel will find it wise to accomplish the work himself before turning the rescued island over to the cubans because they are now too poor to do it thoroughly even if they develop sufficient enterprise which is doubtful at present habana harbor is an immense cesspool cess pool in the form of a ditch with one end closed this end must be dredged out to make the proposed flushing of the gulf stream possible for more than years the stagnant water waiter has been receiving all the sewerage of a great city and the wonder Is not that the neighborhood is unhealthy but burt that anybody can live in it at all the menacing demons ot of disease which have been concentrating themselves there for three centuries must be exterminated the united states must also provide habana with a sewerage system andl indeed eed to render the city even tolerably healthy a good deal of it will have to be ann annihilated I 1 h ij abed hardly one quarter of the entyre population live ilive 60 50 feet above sea level and a great many of the houses are built upon land formed b by the dumping of 0 garbage and street refuse in what to is surely one of the m moat oe t densely populated localities ot of an all the cities on the globe the other ports are not mot much better santiago on its sloping hillside hi has as k excellent natural drainage but la is highest degree unsanitary cardenas the nourishing flourishing chicago of the island which before the war numbered among its business a good many americans is 19 1 9 wholly devoid of sanitation the center of its tan being only four flour feet above aw am level the death rate is high and would doubtless be a good deal higher lexe it not for the fine large harbor to in front nature intended for a healthful place its beautiful harbor being widest and deepest at the entrance thus allowing the sea to flow freely in end and out and it to is also flushed by three big i rivers let a thorough scrubbing sma and infecting disinfecting dis is necessary to make the dirty old city habitable in cienfuegos the so called philadelphia of cuba more than a third of the population living only three feet above subsoil water trinadad city aloft on its lt mountainside is considered the healthiest iest place on the island thanks to the accident of situation not to the wisdom or work of its builders in mazy many cuban towns the water is totally unfit to drink and so scarce in others amt were the entire population to andul indulge in the luxury of bathing and to abt agree on taking turns each person would get no more than one bath a year tn in these hot fever infested countries one should drink as little water as possible and eat no food until it is cooked it law to that effect were enforced in our army it would save the lives of many men the cities and villages of porto rico are even worse than those of cubar cuba only we hear less about them nine tenths of the inhabitants are boxy dirty negroes and modern modem sanitary ar 0 range ments are unknown the water war supply is poor scant and generally pol houses huddled together and densely crowded and smallpox small pox and yellow fever continually stalk the streets san juan the capital ix is aa compactly built as canton china fortunately our troops on their cuban marches will find no ferocious beasts or venomous serpents to contend with snakes are few even in th the 0 jungles but they include some freakish reptiles such to is the maya from ir if to 15 16 fiet feet long and of proportionate circumference cum curn ference it looks formidable enough to put a whole regiment to flight but it to la only a bluff for his huge is harmless and too indo indolent Zent even to hug like his near relations of the boa family one of tho the greatest pests our soldiers will have to encounter is in the or jigger as the wretched little insect to is commonly called it insinuates itself somehow through the stoutest leather and burrows under the MW toenail toe nail then it has t to be dug out with a penknife pen knife tor for IP lr left twenty four hours the insect has not a home but raised a family under the nail and the result may be the loss of the whole preempted pre empted toe by ba amputation sand flies and oen are not much worse in the west In indies dilene than in many of our fashionable seaside resorts but we have nothing to ir our country to match the brown hairy spiders of cuba large as the palm oil of your hand whose bite is not fatal b but 74 causes fever nor have we anything like the belligerent ants known as 11 which go out of t their heir way to attack you and leave a mark which will keep their memory green through many a weary day the cuban scorpions though not particularly dangerous cannot be said to be agreeable c companions ernp an I 1 crift for they have haave a too boob able habit of getting into your shoes over night and nesting in your back tair and sometimes even darting into your ear in search of a safe retreat after all the worst danger our sol all adlere rs will encounter in islands will come from the spaniards themselves not in open warfare but through treachery or as prisoners the spanish prison system is today more barbarous than that of turkey or russia for a thousand years the spaniards have made a congenial study of torture and had ample practice in the inquisition the long accumulation of evil knowledge has been handed down tram generation to generation and improved upon by each until our blockade put an end to such proceed ingo angs batches of cuban suspects were every week forwarded to spain to be a suspect is equivalent to being gelty and those who went never returned while torture has been nomi abolished by the spanish govern ment there Is no doubt the punish ment of political prisoners is made as aa severe and long enduring as the ingenuity ge nulty of man can devise infinitely happier is he who proved guilty of at treason is garroted garro g ted at once heaven knows that hanging that disgrace to our dour civilization is bad enough but the garrote argote to is worse in spain such executions are always in public and the lower spanish element look upon them thein as excellent a trifle better than tham the bull fight the prisoner is brought to the scene death on donkey bac back k where he mounts the scaffold and is manacled mana cled to a chair then a black handkerchief is tied over his face and the iron collar adjusted at the first turn of the thumbscrew thumb screw in the hands of a powerful executioner you hear bones crack and see the wretch vr etch struggling horribly in his bonds bonde at the second turn which is generally delayed the flesh is crushed to jelly the head nearly severed from the body and the scaffold is drenched with blood the majority of offending cubans fiade been sent to ceuta ceata africk africa it is an am old moorish seaport in morocco opposite gibraltar the moors built it about the year and in no other bone on place on earth are so many devices of torture concentrated it ia a surrounded by a chain of ancient and decaying fortresses and under these are the dungeons hewn out of solid rock in tiers to a depth of 60 feet the approach to them is through narrow openings in the stone floors and when the horrible hole is uncovered abe filth and decomposition of centuries sends mends up overpowering odors odom when a roan num Is to be placed in solitary con ft ement abole a hole is cut in the masonry large jarge enough to admit his hie body and he Is dropped in A blacksmith follows to weld his fetters locks docks and keys are never used A heavy weight with a chain is welded to the ankle and nd an iron band is welded around the waist A chain attached to the latter lg Is welded toan to an am iron riep sunk in the wall wait of solid rock the hole in the masonry Is bricked up again except a small space a few inches square through this apera ture comes the scant air and such scraps scrape of food as may be allowed the victim until he dleo dies or is forgotten and left to end his misery by starvation no wonder that so many prisoners commit suicide on the way to ceata ceuta PANNIE FANNIEE BRIGHAM WARD |