alan polk
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2012
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
- Ecclesiastes 1:9
If you've seen the present then you've seen everything – as it's been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.
— Marcus Aurelius
In 1877, a vessel docked outside Pascagoula, Mississippi (a town on the Gulf of Mexico) with one person on it who was believed to be stricken with Yellow Fever.
A quarantine physician and his boatman were seen visiting the boat and then returning to shore. This happened on several occasions and it did not sit well with folks living on the shore. Their concern was not as much the going. It was the coming back they didn't like. They desired a more efficient quarantine.
By the way, there was no Federal interventions when local quarantines were created back then. One reporter noted that "a quarantine is among the reserved rights of the States. It therefore can not lawfully be impaired without a Constitutional amendment." The New Orleans Bulletin, September 15, 1875.
In most respects, that rule applies even today. Like then, it largely remains a State and local function. And, as would probably prove true today, local quarantines were often found to be insufficient and "almost always enforced too late, because the local authorities hesitate to admit the danger that exists for fear of injuring business." Macon Beacon, March 24, 1874.
But I digress…..
Mistrust of State or local officials to handle outbreaks often caused folks to take action into their own hands. This happened in Pascagoula.
When the townspeople saw the quarantine physician and the boatman traveling back and forth, it created obvious alarm.
Believing such activity would unnecessarily bring the disease into their homes and businesses, the townspeople called a meeting and promptly submitted a resolution to the local Board of Health.
The resolution stated that if the board refused to accede to their demands then "it is a duty we owe to ourselves, to this community and to our families, to take steps to prevent any further visits by said physician and boatman to said vessel . . . and to that end we will use every lawful means in our power to protect ourselves, even if we have to use the first law of nature, which is self protection."
The "first law of nature" …. Sounds very American.
Luckily, a compromise was struck and life went on in Pascagoula. But folks back then had good reason to be paranoid. Epidemics were hopelessly common and equally devastating.
In fact, the following year after Pascagoula's "first law of nature"resolution, Yellow Fever swept through the Mississippi River Valley with a vengeance. It would go on to kill nearly 20,000 folks, including one of my ancestors in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Yes, the people had reason to be sensitive to outbreaks.
In Memphis, folks desperate to escape the epidemic, and who could afford it, boarded a steamship and headed north. As they moved upriver, however, not a single town allowed them to disembark. "The ship roamed the Mississippi River for the next two months before unloading her passengers."
They survived, so there's that I guess.
Nevertheless, our ancestors dealt with such things constantly. It was, in a sense, part of their "normal," though I'm not sure they ever got used to it. If it was a normal, it surely must have been an uncomfortable one, for it often brought out the worst in people. But what situation doesn't?
Despite this, it appears our ancestors had a level of social capital built into their communities to help absorb the psychological effects of epidemics. They had vibrant churches, clubs and fraternal organizations. One need only read through the old newspapers to see that sort of social value expressed page after page – and with such pride. It made them accountable to one another.
Citizenship, in that context then, had meaning. I think Alexis de Tocqueville had something to say about that, too.
Sometimes disease ran through a community's social capital just as hard as it did through an individual's immune system, stretching it thin or even breaking it; and it proved devastating.
For example, just a few years before the panic in Pascagoula, Shreveport, Louisiana was nearly ruined by Yellow Fever. That city lost 1,200 people between the months of August and November of 1873. A heck of a number considering its size.
"We no longer have funerals," a reporter observing the epidemic in Shreveport stated. "The hearses, followed by one or two carriages, dash through the streets like a section of artillery in a battle seeking a position." It was a seemingly never ending cycle. "A few more are drummed up," he continued, "the coffin shoved into the hearse and driven rapidly to the cemetery." The Memphis Daily Appeal, September 30, 1873.
"In addition to this," another newspaper reported, "are hundreds of people left without a cent and without employment. Amongst them are many women and little children."
Although President Grant ordered 5,000 military rations to Shreveport, most aid came from surrounding parishes and States. Benevolent organizations like the Howard Association, based out of Virginia, established orphanages for children whose parents had died in Shreveport.
It proved too much for local charities or for one regional organization to manage. The local economy had simply shut down.
All those women and little children had to be fed and cared for, lest they succumb, not only to the disease, but to privation.
"There is," the reporter observed, "no work to do and no money to be had. The destitution in our midst is as heartrending as the disease and deaths are fearful."
Overtaxed, the town pleaded for help from the outside world: "Under these painful circumstances, we are forced to make this general appeal to the country for additional aid." "The well are broken down, the poor are threatened with actual starvation and the sick and dying are about to be deprived of the commonest comforts humanity can offer them. We appeal not to our fellow countrymen, but to our fellow-men for aid."
During these times I'm reminded of an essay I read years ago. Parts of it have such relevance now: "The past," Robert Penn Warren asserted, "is a rebuke to the present." "The drama of the past that corrects us is the drama of our struggles to be human, or our struggles to define the values of our forebears in the face of their difficulties."
Unfortunately, in many communities today, social capital has been weakened or has disappeared altogether in the age of the Internet and globalization – or in the belief that nature can be suppressed, overcome. Perhaps epidemics should serve as a stark reminder to us that, in the end, technology alone cannot free us from the truth of mortality or the psychological effects of that knowledge.
CS Lewis once observed the panic over the atomic bomb. When he was asked by people how we were supposed to live in an atomic age, his reply was timeless and just as relevant today:
How are we to live? "'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.'"
"'In other words,'" Lewis went on to write, "'do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented.'"
Our ancestors overcame; so shall we.
A. Polk
- Ecclesiastes 1:9
If you've seen the present then you've seen everything – as it's been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.
— Marcus Aurelius
In 1877, a vessel docked outside Pascagoula, Mississippi (a town on the Gulf of Mexico) with one person on it who was believed to be stricken with Yellow Fever.
A quarantine physician and his boatman were seen visiting the boat and then returning to shore. This happened on several occasions and it did not sit well with folks living on the shore. Their concern was not as much the going. It was the coming back they didn't like. They desired a more efficient quarantine.
By the way, there was no Federal interventions when local quarantines were created back then. One reporter noted that "a quarantine is among the reserved rights of the States. It therefore can not lawfully be impaired without a Constitutional amendment." The New Orleans Bulletin, September 15, 1875.
In most respects, that rule applies even today. Like then, it largely remains a State and local function. And, as would probably prove true today, local quarantines were often found to be insufficient and "almost always enforced too late, because the local authorities hesitate to admit the danger that exists for fear of injuring business." Macon Beacon, March 24, 1874.
But I digress…..
Mistrust of State or local officials to handle outbreaks often caused folks to take action into their own hands. This happened in Pascagoula.
When the townspeople saw the quarantine physician and the boatman traveling back and forth, it created obvious alarm.
Believing such activity would unnecessarily bring the disease into their homes and businesses, the townspeople called a meeting and promptly submitted a resolution to the local Board of Health.
The resolution stated that if the board refused to accede to their demands then "it is a duty we owe to ourselves, to this community and to our families, to take steps to prevent any further visits by said physician and boatman to said vessel . . . and to that end we will use every lawful means in our power to protect ourselves, even if we have to use the first law of nature, which is self protection."
The "first law of nature" …. Sounds very American.
Luckily, a compromise was struck and life went on in Pascagoula. But folks back then had good reason to be paranoid. Epidemics were hopelessly common and equally devastating.
In fact, the following year after Pascagoula's "first law of nature"resolution, Yellow Fever swept through the Mississippi River Valley with a vengeance. It would go on to kill nearly 20,000 folks, including one of my ancestors in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Yes, the people had reason to be sensitive to outbreaks.
In Memphis, folks desperate to escape the epidemic, and who could afford it, boarded a steamship and headed north. As they moved upriver, however, not a single town allowed them to disembark. "The ship roamed the Mississippi River for the next two months before unloading her passengers."
They survived, so there's that I guess.
Nevertheless, our ancestors dealt with such things constantly. It was, in a sense, part of their "normal," though I'm not sure they ever got used to it. If it was a normal, it surely must have been an uncomfortable one, for it often brought out the worst in people. But what situation doesn't?
Despite this, it appears our ancestors had a level of social capital built into their communities to help absorb the psychological effects of epidemics. They had vibrant churches, clubs and fraternal organizations. One need only read through the old newspapers to see that sort of social value expressed page after page – and with such pride. It made them accountable to one another.
Citizenship, in that context then, had meaning. I think Alexis de Tocqueville had something to say about that, too.
Sometimes disease ran through a community's social capital just as hard as it did through an individual's immune system, stretching it thin or even breaking it; and it proved devastating.
For example, just a few years before the panic in Pascagoula, Shreveport, Louisiana was nearly ruined by Yellow Fever. That city lost 1,200 people between the months of August and November of 1873. A heck of a number considering its size.
"We no longer have funerals," a reporter observing the epidemic in Shreveport stated. "The hearses, followed by one or two carriages, dash through the streets like a section of artillery in a battle seeking a position." It was a seemingly never ending cycle. "A few more are drummed up," he continued, "the coffin shoved into the hearse and driven rapidly to the cemetery." The Memphis Daily Appeal, September 30, 1873.
"In addition to this," another newspaper reported, "are hundreds of people left without a cent and without employment. Amongst them are many women and little children."
Although President Grant ordered 5,000 military rations to Shreveport, most aid came from surrounding parishes and States. Benevolent organizations like the Howard Association, based out of Virginia, established orphanages for children whose parents had died in Shreveport.
It proved too much for local charities or for one regional organization to manage. The local economy had simply shut down.
All those women and little children had to be fed and cared for, lest they succumb, not only to the disease, but to privation.
"There is," the reporter observed, "no work to do and no money to be had. The destitution in our midst is as heartrending as the disease and deaths are fearful."
Overtaxed, the town pleaded for help from the outside world: "Under these painful circumstances, we are forced to make this general appeal to the country for additional aid." "The well are broken down, the poor are threatened with actual starvation and the sick and dying are about to be deprived of the commonest comforts humanity can offer them. We appeal not to our fellow countrymen, but to our fellow-men for aid."
During these times I'm reminded of an essay I read years ago. Parts of it have such relevance now: "The past," Robert Penn Warren asserted, "is a rebuke to the present." "The drama of the past that corrects us is the drama of our struggles to be human, or our struggles to define the values of our forebears in the face of their difficulties."
Unfortunately, in many communities today, social capital has been weakened or has disappeared altogether in the age of the Internet and globalization – or in the belief that nature can be suppressed, overcome. Perhaps epidemics should serve as a stark reminder to us that, in the end, technology alone cannot free us from the truth of mortality or the psychological effects of that knowledge.
CS Lewis once observed the panic over the atomic bomb. When he was asked by people how we were supposed to live in an atomic age, his reply was timeless and just as relevant today:
How are we to live? "'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.'"
"'In other words,'" Lewis went on to write, "'do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented.'"
Our ancestors overcame; so shall we.
A. Polk
Forum Host
Bringing the