Eaton, Dorman B. (Dorman Bridgman), 1823-1899; Public health -- New York (State) -- New York; Sanitation -- New York (State) -- New York
At Mulberry Street, in a notoriously filthy house, it has existed
for more than four years. This house has a population of about 320,
which is renewed every few months. During the period alluded to, there
have been no less than 60 deaths by fever in this single house, and
240 cases. To-day this fever is raging uncontrolled in that house,
creating more orphans than many well-fought battles. Every new family
which enters these infected quarters is sure to fall a victim to this
pestilential disease.
[Illustration: PLAN OF FEVER-NEST, EAST 17TH STREET, 1865
_Here 85 Cases of Typhus Occurred in One Season_]
The tenant-house No. -- East Seventeenth Street, which reaks with
filth, gives the same history; upward of 85 cases, with a large
percentage of deaths, occurred in this single house during the past
season. And still it remained unclean and open to new tenants. I
could mention scores of these houses in every part of the tenant-house
district where typhus has apparently taken up its abode, and from
whence it sends out in every direction its deadly streams.
Not only have single houses become centres of contagion, but this
fever has, in many instances, become localized in crowded streets,
which to-day are almost impassable on account of the heaps of garbage,
and the courts and alleys of which are reeking with filth, making
them great centres of pestilence. From many of these tenements whole
families have been swept away.
[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF FEVER-NEST, 1865, NOT FAR FROM
BROADWAY AND FIFTH AVENUE]
Jersey Street, a short but uncleaned avenue, adjacent to a fashionable
part of Broadway, is another great depot of fever, which, according to
these records, frequently contained upward of thirty cases in progress
at one time. East Eleventh Street, between First and Second Avenues,
now, as all the past summer, in a horribly filthy condition, is a
local habitation of fever of the worst type. The same statement may be
made of nearly every district where the tenant-houses are especially
crowded, and the streets, courts, and alleys are unusually filthy.
[Sidenote: Intestinal Affections]
Intestinal diseases, as cholera infantum, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid
fever, etc., which arise from, or are intensely aggravated by the
emanations from putrescible material in streets, courts, and alleys,
or from cesspools, privies, drain pipes, sewers, etc., were prevalent
in the tenant-house districts, creating, as usual, a vast amount of
sickness, and a large infant mortality. Very generally these diseases
were directly traceable to the decomposing filth, and in some instances
were stopped by the removal of the nuisance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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