8 PROTECTIVE MEASURES

PROTECTIVE MEASURES 

Article from The Circular Newspaper

Published by Oneida & Wallingford

September 21, 1854

The cholera ¹ is still prevailing in various parts of the country, and at south yellow fever ² has commenced it’s a desolating course in the chief cities of the seaboard. We cannot but a regard to thankfulness, the fact that this Commune has passed through another cholera summer in the city, without disturbance from disease, or a member being disabled. We have a theory which answers our convictions about the cause of our immunity very well, and which we will tell, leaving others a judge of it as they please.

The movement of our household in just using 10 and coffee and tobacco about six months ago: was a distinctly providential preparation for passing the sickly season in the city. The value was not so much in the physiological change, (for we have no legal prejudice against these things,) as it was in the release it gave us from the great tobacco chewing; tea and coffee drinking and generally stimulating principality which surrounds us in the population of the city. We have distinctly felt since that our nervous system is no longer complicated as it was before in a great Spirito narcotic system; our telegraph wire is disconnected from the battery so that messages do not pass.

About the same time the anti-medicating movement, the Lord gave us new inspiration for business: we’re became exceedingly attractive and was a constant ordinance of life throughout the canyons. At the same time also the Bible game was given to us, and excited general interest as it has continued to do these things considered a system of measures to which, with God’s blessing, we attribute our protection from the pestilential influences that have been felt around us. With such preparation a person, it appears to us, I need not fear any circumstances of epidemic ³. First become disengaged from bad spiritual partnerships, which are channels of infection, then mix up daily and freely with the Bible, and spend the time in useful work, and there is little danger of civil contagion.

1. cholera: A deadly disease that spread across the nation from Asia and could cause death within hours of contracting it.
2. yellow fever: A deadly disease that struck multiple southern countries. It was spread by the bite of an infected mosquito and thrived in humid hot climates. The epidemic hit the hardest in America in New Orleans. The deadliest year on record was 1853 in America.
3. not fear any circumstances of epidemic: The writer is referring to the city of Brooklyn, the city in which this newspaper was published.