Not only have single houses become centres of contagion, but this fever has, in many instances, become localized in crowded streets, which to-day are almost impassable on account of the heaps of garbage, and the courts and alleys of which are reeking with filth, making them great centres of pestilence. From many of these tenements whole families have been swept away.
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF FEVER-NEST, 1865, NOT FAR FROM BROADWAY AND FIFTH AVENUE
Jersey Street, a short but uncleaned avenue, adjacent to a fashionable part of Broadway, is another great depot of fever, which, according to these records, frequently contained upward of thirty cases in progress at one time. East Eleventh Street, between First and Second Avenues, now, as all the past summer, in a horribly filthy condition, is a local habitation of fever of the worst type. The same statement may be made of nearly every district where the tenant-houses are especially crowded, and the streets, courts, and alleys are unusually filthy.
Intestinal diseases, as cholera infantum, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid fever, etc., which arise from, or are intensely aggravated by the emanations from putrescible material in streets, courts, and alleys, or from cesspools, privies, drain pipes, sewers, Intestinal
Affections etc., were prevalent in the tenant-house districts, creating, as usual, a vast amount of sickness, and a large infant mortality. Very generally these diseases were directly traceable to the decomposing filth, and in some instances were stopped by the removal of the nuisance.
The Inspector of the Eighth Ward reports: “Cholera infantum has probably consigned many more to the grave during the past summer than all other diseases in my inspection district. In every case examined I have found it associated with some well-marked course of insalubrity; vegetable and animal decomposition have been the most prominent causes. That fifty per cent die from preventable causes in my inspection district I do not doubt.”
The Inspector of the Sixth Ward says: “The mortality among children is fearfully high, many families having lost all their children; others four out of five or six.”
PLAN OF MONROE STREET FEVER-NEST, 1865
The Inspector of the Ninth Ward says he found among the people living near the mouth of an open sewer: “That no less than twenty-nine cases of dysentery and diarrhoea, Living at a
Sewer’s Mouth five of which had terminated fatally, had occurred during the three weeks immediately preceding his inspection.” He adds: “Now, when we take into consideration the fact that there are only twenty-two dwellings on this square (a considerable portion of it being occupied by a large lumber-yard), and that all these cases had occurred within a period of about twenty-one days, the ratio becomes appalling. How many cases may have occurred subsequently, I have not sought to ascertain, my time being fully occupied in the inspection of the other parts of my district. But a still more direct and specific action of the poisonous emanations proceeding from this obstructed sewerage, manifested itself in the dwelling on the corner of West and Gansevoort streets, which is in the closest proximity to the outlet of the sewer. Here I learned, upon inquiry, that typhoid fever had prevailed almost continuously during the preceding winter, and I found three severe cases of dysentery at the time of my visit.”