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YELL O'-.' FEVER 07FICIALIY DECLARED AT
00028	OCEAN	SPRINGS	A.	TER	SIX	\'EEKS	DELAY
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September 6, 1B97 "The Sea Coast Echo” of Eay St. Louis,Viss. Sept. 11, 1897
HISTORY 0? THE YELLOW FcVER Facts of the Vild Epidemic at Ocean Springs V.rhich Was at First Pronounced Dengue
For five weeks oast an eoidemic of fever has prevailed at Ocean Springs, and local physicians at that pl^ce united in pronouncing It Dengue Fever. Day by day the number of sick increased, and finally there were more than five hundred (500) sick„peonle-out--of-a normal population of tvo thousand (2,000).
Kev Orleans doctors vere called on for help, as the huge proportions of the epidemic had grown entirely beyond the control of the Ocean Springs Doctors.
Dr. Bemiss went there and in a few days was taken sick, and within seventy-two hours died with black vomit. His death was given out as having been caused by congestion of the stomach, and his body was conveyed to New Orleans for burial.
The death of so nrorinent a physician under such suspicious circumstances opened the eyes of everybody that there was something terrible concealed behind the thinly woven stories of "dengue^fever."
The I'obile authorities sent members of the Alabama State Board of Health to Ocean Springs and these were joined by Mississippi and Louisiana State Health officers. The presence of medical representativ from three states at Ocean Springs raised anxiety to fever heat. After a session lasting twenty-four hours, the Alabama doctors went home and reported the disease at Ocean Springs to be Yellow Fever, and Kobile instantly quarantined against the infected.place.
The Louisiana and Vississipni doctors withheld their opinion until Vonday (Sept. 6), but after holding an autopsy on three persons who died of the prevailing fever, they also pronounced it yellow, fever*
The greatest apprehension has arisen in consequence of this officj declaration that after six weeks dillydallying end criminal or ignoranl concealment of facts, the dreaded scourge, yellow fever, has been raging at Ocean S rrings--vhile hundreds of neople from various sectioi of this country have been going to and coming from the plague stricken
STDOt .
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