The condition
of the city was exceedingly unsanitary, and after the pestilence had
passed, was allowed to remain so, though at that time the origin of
yellow fever was, of course, not known, and it was assumed that the
disease resulted from lack of proper sanitation.
In 1878 there was another yellow fever epidemic. The first case
developed August 2, but the news was suppressed until the middle of the
month, by which time a number of cases had come down. The day after the
news became known 22 new cases were reported. Terror spread through the
town. Hordes of people tried to flee at once. Families left their houses
with the doors wide open and silver standing on the sideboards. People
flocked to the trains; when they could not get seats they stood in the
aisles or clambered onto the roofs of the cars; if they could not get in
at car doors they climbed in through the windows, and sometimes, when
the father of a family was refused admittance to a crowded car, he would
force a way in for his wife and children at the pistol's point.
In the first week of the panic there were 1,500 cases, with an average
of ten deaths daily; in the next week, 3,000 cases with fifty deaths
daily, and so on into September during which month there was an average
of 8,000 to 10,000 cases with about two hundred deaths a day.
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