The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling RuinWalker, James Herbert
History
The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
"It is our impression," said Dr. T.L. White, assistant to the State
Board of Health, this morning, "that there is going to be great sickness
here within the next week. Five cases of malignant diphtheria were
located this morning on Bedford street, and as they were in different
houses they mean five starting points for disease. All this talk about
the dangers of epidemic is not exaggerated, as many suppose, but is
founded upon all experience. There will be plenty of typhoid fever and
kindred diseases here within a week or ten days in my opinion. The only
thing that has saved us thus far has been the cool weather. That has now
given place to summer weather, and no one knows what the next few days
may bring forth."
Fresh Meat and Vegetables Wanted.
Even among the workmen there is already discernible a tendency to
diarrhoea and dysentery. The men are living principally upon salt
meat, and there is a lack of vegetables. I have been here since Sunday
and have tasted fresh meat but once since that time. I am only one of
the many. Of course the worst has passed for the physicians, as our
arrangements are now perfected and each corps will be relieved from time
to time. Twenty more physicians arrived from Pittsburgh this morning and
many of us will be relieved to-day. But the opinion is general among the
medical men that there will be more need for doctors in a week hence
than there is now.
Sanitary Work.
Dr. R.L. Sibbel, of the State Board of Health, is in charge of Sanitary
Headquarters. "We are using every precaution known to science," said he
this morning, "to prevent the possibility of epidemic. Our labors here
have not been confined to any particular channel, but have been extended
in various directions. Disinfectants, of course, are first in
importance, and they have been used with no sparing hand. The prompt
cremation of dead animals as fast as discovered is another thing we have
insisted upon. The immediate erection of water-closets throughout the
ruins for the workmen was another work of the greatest sanitary
importance that has been attended to. They, too, are being disinfected
at frequent intervals. We have a committee, too, that superintends the
burial of the victims at the cemeteries. It is of the utmost importance
in this wholesale interment that the corpses should be interred a safe
distance beneath the surface in order that their poisonous emanations
may not find exit through the crevices of the earth.
"Another committee is making a house-to-house inspection throughout the
stricken city to ascertain the number of inhabitants in each standing
house, the number of the sick, and to order the latter to the hospital
whenever necessary. One great danger is the overcrowding of houses and
hovels, and that is being prevented as much as possible by the free use
of tents upon the mountain side. So far there is but little contagious
disease, and we hope by diligent and systematic efforts to prevent any
dangerous outbreak."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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