Washington County Epidemics

(Special to the Plain Dealer)
Marietta, Feb. 19.--Macksburg, O., about 500 or 600 population; and situated ten miles from this city on the Cleveland & Marietta railroad, is undergoing an epidemic of malignant diptheria and a strict quarantine has been established both without and within. The disease has been confined entirely the children thus far and there already have been several deaths, while many others are critically ill. The schools have been dismissed, all church service and public gatherings of all descriptions are prohibited and no person under sixteen years of age is permitted to appear upon the streets. Medical aid has been summoned from this city, Caldwell and Zanesville, the local physicians being about exhausted with their long struggle against the epidemic. All burials, too, are strictly private, and interment is made at night and all articles in use in houses in which there have been cases of the disease are burned and the houses themselves thoroughly disinfected. The disease has been epidemic at Macksburg for some time, but so great have been the precautions observed that intelligence of the condition of affairs has but just reached this city, and considerable apprehension is alread felt here that the epidemic may reach here in spite of quarantine precautions.

Source: Plain-Dealer, February 20, 1892, Transcribed by C. Anthony

     

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