![]() ![]() On Thursday the grave was opened for the husband. The wife of a well-known Magistrate, Prentiss, was taken by it and died on Monday. In a German family, on the corner of Jefferson and Seventh, consisting of eight persons, all died save one, an infant. In one house, thus occupied, on Vermont street, eight died within three days. The heaviest mortality was in the last week in July, when 44 deaths were reported.īesides its free ravage among the immigrants it found a field among the families which, because of the unusually high water, were driven from the bottom lands, near Quincy, and had crowded themselves together in temporary homes. An addition of at least one hundred to the above figure would be not far from correct. The distinction between deaths from “cholera” and “other causes” was for reasons that will be understood, usually made to discredit the extent of the epidemic so as to allay apprehension. Two hundred and thirty-six deaths from cholera were officially reported as late as the latter part of August, when the disease had nearly run its course, but this record is defective, since many burials were unreported. How long this state of gloom and despondency is to last, the Great Disposer of events only knows.” Travel, to a great extent, on the river, is suspended for the present and the packets now plying between this city and St. Our country friends seem to have deserted us, but few visit the city, and those only who are compelled to do so, to provide the necessaries for the harvest. It is indeed a trying time in the history of Quincy. How it affected public feeling and business is expressed by the Whig, which, in its issue of July 10th, says: “The sickness last week, and the increased number of deaths, seems to have spread a gloom over the city, visible in the countenances of all. About the first week in September it finally disappeared. But, with a deadlier stroke it returned for the third time, on the 11th of June, and from that time continued to increase in the number of cases and malignancy, up to the 4th week in July, when it commenced abating. Only one more death occurred during this month and none in April, thus giving hope that the blast had passed by, but with a like suddenness it reappeared on the 13th of May, when five deaths were reported, and before the end of the month seven additional fatal cases occurred yet on the 1st of June and for the following ten days there were none. The other three were in the south part of the city of Quincy. Two of them were four miles north in the country, at Miller’s or Leonard’s Mill. On Saturday, March 17th, five cases were reported, all of which proved fatal during the night and Sunday. The smallpox, a more odious pest than the cholera, had in the winter and early spring prevailed to such an extent as to arouse public alarm and to call for the preventive action of the authorities, in the prescribing of general vaccination, isolation of the sick, establishing a pest house, etc.ĭuring the preceding year cholera had swept through the seaboard and lake cities and early in the spring developed itself in the Mississippi Valley, coming upon Quincy like a lightning stroke. ![]() Many of the early settlers still vividly retained an apprehensive recollection of the sad scenes through which they had gone during that brief visitation of this desolating scourge. The conditions of sixteen years before were repeating, when preceded by two sickly seasons of fever, the Asiatic cholera, decimated, within one week, the entire population of the little village, then containing between four and five hundred people. Pestilence placed its paralyzing hand on all the interests with a grasp and weight that can only be realized by those who have felt its dark experience. ![]() This was a gloomy and depressing period for Quincy, as it was for nearly every other place in the west. Cholera epidemics struck the Quincy area in the years 18. Cholera is spread by feces-contaminated water and food. The painless, watery diarrhea and the passing of rice-water stool are characteristic. It is caused by a potent toxin produced by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which acts on the small intestine to cause secretion of large amounts of fluid. Cholera is an acute, infectious disease characterized by profuse diarrhea, vomiting, and cramps.
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