during this season within the city limits. No record was kept of the facts of this visitation, and I am able to give only these general statements in relation to it. THE EPIDEMIC OF 1874-5. Of the first cases of small-pox which occurred in Mobile in 1874, I am able to state neither the date of their appearance, nor the sources whence they were derived, nor the relations in which they stood towards the subsequent epidemic. During the spring and the summer months, and up, indeed, to the month of November, no record of cases was kept, except the record of deaths; and as the number of deaths was small during the continuance of warm weather, there was not excited in the public mind any apprehension of approaching danger. If the city had been under competent sanitary administration, the danger would of course have been seen from the beginning, and the proper measures would have been taken to arrest its progress. But the people of Mobile had not learned to understand the importance of having the sanitary supervision of the city conducted by sanitary experts; the municipal authorities had chosen to repeal the HealthOrdinance of 1871, and to dispense, almost contemptuously, with the services of the Board of Health; and so it happened that no effort was made to extinguish the fires of infection. until the pestilence had swelled into epidemic dimensions. At length, however, when the pestilence had already gained admission into every quarter of the city, and when the danger had assumed such portentious proportions as to make it impossible that it should any longer be overlooked, then, by common consent, the people appealed for help to the Board of Health; and the Board of Health, true to the unselfish spirit of the medical profession, placed themselves in the breach, and undertook to suppress the epidemic. The pestilence at first made slow progress. There is even reason to believe that it was several times introduced, and that it several times spontaneously disappeared, before it at length made a permanent lodgment amongst us. Although we have no particular account of these earlier cases, there can be no question that they were imported from New Orleans, with which city we are in daily communication; and where the small-pox has maintained its ground ever since 1869, in defiance of times and seasons and all the assaults that have been made upon it. There was at least one case in the city in April. We have no account of any case in May. June and July each furnished one known case; August and September each three known cases; while in October the number of known cases swelled up to thirty-three (33). I say known cases, because it is quite certain that a considerable number of cases occurred during these months which have escaped discovery; so that while we have been able to trace but forty-two (42) cases before the first of November, I have little doubt that the real number was somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty (60) or seventy (70). Be this as it may, the pestilence had been neglected until it had gained a terrible advantage. Up to the first of November not less than forty (40) houses had been invaded. These were scattered from one extremity of the city to the other; and from each one, as a focus of infection, the seeds of pestilence were scattered over the adjacent neighborhood. They fell upon generous soil, and under the influence of favorable weather they sprang up into malignant life and bore abundant fruit. During the first weeks of November the progress of the pestilence became so rapid as to occasion general alarm, and it was now that the Board of Health was invoked to lend its assistance. It organized on the 12th of the month, and on the 13th it had already taken the field against the enemy, and had some twenty agents-vaccinating physicians, clerks and police-inspectors-regularly at work. Of course it took some time for this work to begin to manifest itself in beneficent results. By the end of the month two hundred and ninety-three new cases had occurred, besides such as remained over from October; and one hundred and eighty-five houses were known to be infected. It was now that the pestilence had reached its maximum of prevalence, both as to the number of coexisting cases, and also as to the number of infected places. After this it continued slowly but surely to decline, and each succeeding month presented a shorter list of cases and a diminished number of infected centers, until at the beginning of April, it ceased to be epidemic in any quarter of the city, although sporadic cases continued to occur for sometime longer. The principal facts of the epidemic of a statistical character will be found in the subjoined tables. Table of infected places for each month during the epidemic : These numbers added together would give the sum total of 677; but the number of places infected was considerably less than this, because in many instances the same house continued to be infected from one month to another, and such houses have been counted in the foregoing table more than once. The real number of infected houses, as will be seen from the next table, was 614. Table of infected houses, arranged according to the number of cases occurring in them severally : |