Every disinfectant America had ever heard
of was given a trial, and every man who possessed a shot-gun fired it
all day and all night. The bells tolled incessantly. The din and the
smells were hideous, the death carts rattled from dawn till dawn; many
were left unburied in their houses for a week; hundreds died daily; and
the city confessed itself helpless, although it cleaned the streets.
Hamilton had a very light attack, but Dr. Stevens dropped in frequently
to see him; he privately thought him of more importance than all
Philadelphia.
Lying there and thinking of many things, too grateful for the rest to
chafe at the imprisonment, and striving for peace with himself, Hamilton
one day conceived the idea of immersing yellow-fever patients in
ice-water. Microbes were undiscovered, but Hamilton, perhaps with a
flashing glimpse of the truth, reasoned that if cold weather invariably
routed the disease, a freezing of the infected blood should produce the
same result. He succeeded in convincing Stevens, with the issue that
when the scourge was over, the young West Indian doctor had so many
cures to his credit, where all other physicians had failed, that the
City Council presented him with a silver tankard, gratefully inscribed,
and filled with golden coins.
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