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Show THE NEW ORLEANS PESTILENCE. .The authorities and people of New Orleans are having a hard game with the yellow fever, but they are going to conquer. Certain facts have been absolutely demonstrated regarding yellow fever. They are these: The disease comes from a certain species of mosquito called the stego-myla. stego-myla. When this insect feasts upon a yellow fever patient and then stings a well person, that person per-son will come down with the disease on the fifth day. The mosquito does not exist in latitudes latit-udes above 37, but it may be carried in the warm hold of a ship to a higher latitude. They breed in stagnant water and their natural life is 150 days. Then the problems of combatting the , s . disease are to cover all patients with netting, and j to destroy the breeding places of the insect. A J 1 'H coat of oil on the water will do the work of de- I ? struction, for when the larva from the mosquito ! ) takes on life and rises to the surface they are suffocated in the oil. It is clear then that if the i (' 'M patients can be kept so covered that no mos- j I jH quito can light upon them, and if the breeding j jH places can be destroyed, the disease will at once , be stamped out. This was done in three weeks . SOB in Havana, and the city was freed from yellow , . fever for the first time in a century. ;' j j 'H New Orleans is a hard place to make the fight ' j I 'B in because the city has only surface sewers, from 1 jil jfl which the oil is constantly carried off by the cur- I; H rent; then it depends upon cistern water for the ! ' ' ' BE daily use of the people, and it is most difficult I M to keep these cisterns covered; then there are ! 9 pools for miles around or below the city, and , 9 finally it has a great settlement of people who, in 1 !v 9 their panic, will not learn and practice the sim- j M ;9 pie methods necessary to stamp out the malady; . I J ; flfl but rather will hide their sick and dead from the H'j j . authorities. With all these things to contend with, we believe that at any time the news may come . j ( that the plague has been arrested. The people j j ' :B there are meeting the calamity splendidly, and ; j 91 now the general government has assumed con- ,5,1 H trol and is bringing everything to bear to stamp j 1 ; ' 9 out the pestilence. When the waters are all taken ' 1 1 9 care of and when every new case is at once cov- ! H ered with netting, there can be but one result. 1 21 In former epidemics there was nothing to do 9 but to care for the sick and wait for the frost. 1 9 A white frost kills every mosquito and all persons ' j J , 1 fl ill of the disease die the day after the coming of I , 9 the frost. J j t JB And yet New Orleans has been careless. The 1 ' " fl city is inland many miles from the sea. On ) ' 9 either bank is stagnant water. The fever was jfl brought from the tropics in fruit steamers.' Those j 1 gjflj steamers are open to be loaded, they are opened ! again after getting into the river in preparation fl of unloading. It would be easy for the vicious j H mosquito to escape from the holds of these ships ! I 9 and to begin to deposit larvae in the stagnant ' ' M water. Then there must have been careless in- r f ral spection and lax quarantine held on these ships. : 1 1 fl Some of them came in three days from the near- B est fruit fields. When bitten the disease does not ' M manifest itself until the fifth day thereafter. H Coming from where the fever prevails, the most ' H rigid inspection should have been made in every ' ' H case, and then the quarantine laid to cover the m five days. ' , i tU But carelessness is not uncommon. There be- 1 ,f jB ing no fever it is so easy to be persuaded that I I H there is no danger. Then the men directly in- ( jjjl terested in the trade concealed the facts the ' 1 1 9 truth might hurt their sales. j B So the great city was lulled into quiet until the j i I pestilence was upon it in full force. They prob- , j I ably did as well as any people would, they surely 9 are doing as well now as any people could. !, : jfl But does it not read strangely that Havana j , 1 H has issued a vigorous quarantine against New j 1 B Orleans because of yellow fever? The fever had v I its birth in the slave ships that in the long ago i' p fl made their fearful landings there, and the city j I was not free from it for a century or more. j j flj Bi ;'. ft When slavery perished the cause was discovered, Lww ! If; and now Havana is vigilant in its fight against : ; I; it, but it seems almost a solemn joke that a city Wt : that has given New Orleans the pestilence so II' ! often has now closed its gates against any ingress ummm Ijffjj from New Orleans. |