bed another child just able to crawl about, and on
her right the corpse of a third child who had died
two days previously, which the unhappy mother
could not get removed.’—Letter
from Dr. O’Leary, Kanturk.
“’Ellen Pagan, a young woman, whose husband was obliged, in order to seek employment, to leave her almost destitute in a miserable cabin, with three children, gave the shelter of her roof to a poor beggar who had fever. She herself caught the disease, and from the terror created in the neighborhood, was, with her three children, deserted—except that some person left a little water and milk at the window for the children,—one about four, the other about three years old, and the other an infant at her breast. In this way she continued for a week, when a neighbor sent her a loaf of bread, which was left in the window. Four days after this he grew uneasy about her, and one night having prepared some tea and bread, he set off to her ralief. When he arrived, the following scene presented itself:—In the window lay the loaf, where it had been deposited four days previously; in one corner of the cabin, on a little straw, without covering of any kind, lay the wretched mother, actually dying, and her infant dead by her side, for the want of that sustenance which she had not to give; on the floor lay the children, to all appearance dying also of cold and hunger. At first they refused to take anything, and he had to pour a little liquid down their throats—with the cautious administration of food they gradually recovered. The woman expired before the visitor quitted the house.’— Letter from Dr. Mucarthney, Monivae.
“’A man, his wife, and two children lay together in a fever. The man died in the night; his wife, nearly convalescent, was so terrified with his corpse in the same bed with her, that she relapsed, and died in two days after; the children recovered from fever, but the eldest lost his reason by the fright. Many other scenes have I witnessed, which would be too tedious to relate.’—Barker & Oheyne’s Report.
“I know not of any visitation so much to be dreaded as epidemic fever; it is worse than the plague, for it lasts throughout all seasons. Cholera may seem more frightful, but it is in reality less destructive. It terminates rapidly in death, or in as rapid recovery. Its visitation, too, is short, and it leaves those who recover unimpaired in health and strength. Civil war, were it not for its crimes, would be, as far as regards the welfare of a country, a visitation less to be dreaded than epidemic fever.”
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