(Note: The following is part of a series of columns looking at the establishment and growth of doctors, hospitals and the health industry in Georgia and Bulloch County.)

    Dr. James Waring, chairman of Savannah’s Dry Culture Committee and son of Dr. William Waring, published his book, "The Epidemic at Savannah, 1876: Its Causes, the Measures of Prevention," in 1879.
    On September 20, 1876, Waring informed Savannah’s mayor and city council that "diseases as yellow fever … are produced by the seeds of living organisms … classed as cryptogenic (unknown) plants."
    Therefore, he suggested residents should "attack every particle of green mold … Every tree should be whitewashed, so also every wooden fence, old wooden house, (and) scrape old shingle roofs and whitewash them."
    Savannah’s citizenry responded to Waring’s warnings with scorn. "Hugo" wrote a letter to the "Morning News," doubting if there was "a single person of average stupidity" who believed Waring’s warnings. He asked, incredulously, if Savannah would be "swallowed by an earthquake, or spit out by an eruption, or blown up by dynamite, or blown down by a cyclone" if residents did not scrape the moss off the trees.
    After 16 inches of rain fell in June of 1876, there was a massive overflow onto the site of the city’s garbage dump, located near the city limits on Springfield Plantation land.
    The smell was so bad the Central of Georgia’s passengers complained when their trains passed through the area. Area resident Captain James Dooner refused to return to his house until authorities compelled him to.
    Waring recorded, "The atmosphere was so loaded with spores of fungi and algae that all surfaces were attacked … brick walls, wooden structures were attacked by mould … milk soured so rapidly … meat spoiled so rapidly."
    In fact, the Georgia State Board of Health asserted in its second annual report (1876) "an epidemic of malarial disorders, of an exceedingly acute grade," was present in the city of Savannah.
    The Savannah Men’s Benevolent Association was formed, consisting of doctors, businessmen and others. They divided the city into "Wards" and sent teams out every day to provide medicine and food to the sick.
    People panicked. Some 5000 of the city’s residents fled inland. Station 4 1/2 (Oliver Station) on the Central of Georgia main line reported four deaths from yellow fever, two of whom belonged to the troops sent to guard the refugees.
    Waring bemoaned the "exceptional neglect" of both the city’s "elaborate and expensive system of drainage" and the Bilbo Canal, from which drained "all the sewage of the town, as a major cause of diseases.
    Waring placed much of the fault on the city’s "privy problem." In the city’s 5,000 houses, there were 1,759 "water closets." Most were connected to "midden vaults (or ‘dry wells’)." There were also 3,366 privies.
    He wrote, "No mild language can fairly describe the nauseating abominations of these 'middens.' Even when clean, the saturated sides give off as much odor as the full vault."
    He continued, "Modern science has proven beyond refutation, that the germs of such diseases as yellow fever … are the pathogenic bacteria of putrefactive beds and putrefactive emanations" such as these.
    Waring blamed the spread of epidemic on the air, which he said was "conveyed to distant points" via "the clean cut swaths of the forests" made by the Savannah, Skidaway, and Seaboard and Central railroads.
           
    Roger Allen is a local lover of history. Allen provides a brief look each week at the area's past. Email Roger at rwasr1953@gmail.com.