Plague

Death is invariably attended by unpleasant physical phenomena which differ but little in most instances and to which physicians become hardily accustomed. Exceptionally unstomachable, however, were those changes accompanying the disease of a certain Mexican woman in Los Angeles, just as the circumstances of her illness had been exceptionally baffling. Dead, she was interred conventionally; husband and friends hacked to the burial. A week later her husband died, the same undiagnosed distemper causing his demise, the same grim disfigurement consequent upon it, as had occasioned, attended, the death of his wife. Each day thereafter was marked-- by the death, under identical circumstances, of one or more of those who had followed the body of the woman. People in the .section of the city--a poor one--where the deaths were occurring began to whisper a word whose horror, long laid in the earth, once screamed from every ditch, devastating cities. "Plague," they said. Health authorities acted. The Mexican Quarter was tightly quarantined. None were allowed passage through its streets, even in automobiles. None were allowed egress from the district except a few industrial workers with special permits. Food was delivered but no garbage or milk containers taken out. The dead were burnt at once. Those ministering to the pestilence-stricken went in and out wearing a sterilized habit, their faces masked. Doctors stated that a pneumonic rather than a bubonic germ was responsible for the disease, but awaited a final diagnosis. Deaths, which numbered 21 in 15 days, went on mounting.