YELLOW FEVER IN SOUTHERN CITIES. ~ 1097 
The town has been very thoroughly cleansed, and if the recent 
hurricane has visited Nassau, as it probably has, the germs of 
the disease will be destroyed.” It is, therefore, now altogether 
probable, that the sickness which occurred in Nassau in the win- 
ter and spring of 1880, was of the yellow fever type. That it 
did not more generally prevail, is no doubt due to the fact that 
Nassau is so well ventilated with ocean winds. In certain locali- 
ties there existed conditions favorable to its spread, and in these 
the fever germs took root, so that the disease was sporadic and 
not pestilential, and the result of local causes. 
The fact should in this connection be stated, as a matter of 
justice to Nassau, that all the cities of the Southern States and 
of the West India Islands, have been occasionally subject to the 
same disease. 
An apparently intelligent and well-informed correspondent of 
“¢ The Semi-Tropical,”—a monthly magazine formerly published 
in Jacksonville, Florida—in the December number of that peri- 
odical for 1877, gives some instances of the prevalence of this 
disease which are worthy of consideration. He says: ‘‘In 1857, 
Jacksonville was visited by a fatal epidemic, generated by the 
opening of the railroad through a swamp hole in the heart of 
a little hamlet during the warm season, when the exhalations 
were foetid with miasma. It was confined at first to those resid- 
ing in the immediate vicinity of this swamp, and radiated from 
that center, but did not cross the river. It was as destructive 
as yellow fever, though in many respects, it lacked some of the 
essential features of that disease. It proved fatal to an alarming 
degree, but more from the impossibility of securing nurses and 
proper assistance, than from any necessity of the disease.” He 
adds that before that, yellow fever cases from the West Indies 
had not spread. 
He also refers to ‘‘a few fatal cases of what is termed in the : 
