The Pocahontas Times
December 1890
SMALLPOX
“The coward suffers a thousand deaths” is a saying as old as the hills. It is never more true than when there is a disease in the country.
All we can do is to retain an equable frame of mind, for a man in his usual health and spirits is less apt to contract a contagious disease, and protect ourselves by vaccination and go about our business.
If the disease comes to a man, he is duty bound to remain in a self-imposed quarantine until a medical man gives him permission to stir abroad.
There is less smallpox in Pocahontas than any county in the State.
Get vaccinated and keep cool. Vaccinate, isolate and disinfect. There are fewer cases in the county now than three months since.
DISINFECTING
The question of disinfecting in the present mild epidemic of smallpox through which we are passing is one of great importance. Formal-dehyde gas, generated by a special apparatus is the best; the fumigation of rooms with sulphur, an old method, is useful but not nearly so effective as formaldehyde. Washing the walls of the rooms, a solution of corrosive sublimate, twenty grains to a pint of water, should be used. All infected clothing should be burned or thoroughly boiled and then aired in the sunshine for days.
One of the best remedies to render the disease less contagious is to make a solution of corrosive sublimated, two grains to a pint of water, and use as a local application to the pustules and scabs. It also prevents pitting to some extent, and lessens the severity of the disease.
Small pox does not spread its contagion very far among a population thoroughly vaccinated.
A very small percent of the people of Pocahontas had ever been vaccinated, consequently it is not strange that an epidemic should visit us.
Physicians are most thoroughly immune through this preventative, and even that did not prevent me from having a mild attack, having been constantly exposed to it for some months.
If you are well vaccinated, smallpox will not spoil your face.
J. W. PRICE, M.D.
TOBACCO
Of the genus Nicotiana, much has been written and said. Dickens says that you can get more for your money in tobacco than anything else, and the victim of the habit clings to it as something to take the place of friends, food and home. The habit is generally contracted through curiosity; nothing on earth being so repulsive to man as the first smoke.
The effect of the poison is a terrible depression of spirits and violent sickness. There is no telling how many habits there are that could be contracted the same way, for at the beginning the tobacco habit is, to say the least, unpromising. The use of it creates a new want in the system, and the curiosity of the victim is dearly paid for.
If is doubtful if the habit would have taken hold on white people had it not been widely advertised by a medical man of Spain, Nicolo Menardes, as a cure all.
Another thing that probably helped to fix the habit was the fact that both Church and State passed laws against its use, about the beginning of the seventeenth century.
In Turkey, it was punished by death by torture and having the pipes of smokers thrust through their noses. In Russia the noses of smokers were cut off.
James I issued “A Counterblast to Tobacco.” In it, he described its use as “A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
WHY THE TRAMP IS THE BIG RAILROADS’ MOST EXPENSIVE PATRON
One of the greatest sources of annoyance and perplexity to every railroad superintendent is the “hobo.” The members of this easy-going gentry have selected the road of steel as a natural successor for their purposes to the “King’s highway” of a century and a half ago. It is stated on good authority that the various railway lines of the country spend each year more than a million dollars in attempts to keep their lines free from tramps.
It is easy to understand, says the New York Herald, why the “hobo” prefers the railways to the highways. In the first place, they offer the most direct routes between towns, and in spite of beliefs to the contrary, the genuine “hobo” prefers not to stray any further than is necessary from these centres of population. It is easier to count ties than to pick one’s way through the uncertainties of country dirt roads. The railroad is never muddy in wet weather nor very dusty in the dry season. Moreover, there is always the alluring possibility of stealing a ride on the trucks, the “blind baggage” or within the friendly shelter of some box car.
While the railway is a great boon to the members of the genus hobo, it cannot be said that the reverse is true. In fact, so great a dislike do the railway officials show to the free and indiscriminate use of their property that they spend thousands of dollars in employing men to drive the tramps off trains and away from the line…
If these men are driven off one train, they catch onto the next that comes along. If they are sent to the penitentiary, they serve their terms and return to the road. No amount of beating or imprisonment serves to discourage them, and the problem of dealing with them is a source of continual perplexity to railway officials…