1893-1894 - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

APPENDIX. 195
typhoid fever in that section of the country than any section
in tlie State. For twelve or fifteen miles there is not
a creek or a branch. It is as dry and sandy a country as
I have ever been through, and I have traveled a good deal,
and there is more typhoid fever in that section than any
place I ever saw in my life.
There was one house in which
the whole family had died of typhoid fever. There was
one old man that had the fever, and we could not persuade
him that he was not going to die, because everybody else
around there had died."
Dr. Thomas: "Do you know what connection there was
between the houses?"
Gentleman "
: I do not know, sir. The country was very
sparsely settled.'.'
Dr. Thomas: "Were there any streams on any side to
which the cattle might get?"
Gentleman: "There was one bottom."
Another gentleman in the audience: "Mr. Cbairnum, I
think I can explain it. Several of these people have hogpens
and stables above their springs, and among other
things I will say that the care of their sick is very poor.
Instead of isolating the patient and keeping tlie
patient to
himself, the neighbors go up to the house at night, and
sometimes you will find fifteen or twenty people in the
neighborhood around there. They go in to see the patient.
I
went to a funeral down there where a man had just died
of typhoid fever, and I suppose there were a hundred or
one hundred and fifty people at the funeral, and against
my advice there were about fifty women and about twentyfive
babies there who went u[) by the grave where the open
corpse was exposed to view. The doctors down there can
verify what I say."
Dr. Battle : "I
would like to say Just a word in this connection.
It is so hard to say exactly how this contagion
is .spread. In a prosperous city in England the people