By GORDIE LITTLE, Small Talk
I have the neatest friends.
They call on the telephone and send letters with suggestions for future columns. They stop me in the grocery store with comments and ideas. I welcome all of them and have file drawers overflowing with notes.
Like father, like son.
I remember my late dad clipping newspaper stories and typing sermon ideas to keep handy in files near the giant desk in his study.
It pleases me to think that he looks down with a smile on my stacks of notes and other precious "stuff" in my River Room.
BEFORE HOSPITAL CARE
I've been thinking about the pandemic known as H1N1 (or swine flu) in recent months and reviewing how we have handled such epidemics in the past.
The topic for this column is "pesthouses." I hadn't given them much thought since reading Charles Dickens. The term has all but fallen from use; however, it is generally defined as a building in which to quarantine, incarcerate and isolate people during widespread instances of infectious diseases, often called pestilences, such as cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, leprosy, scarlet fever and the so-called "plague."
Pesthouses were thrust back into my focus when Robbie Camp called me several weeks ago. He said his grandmother, the late Eva Garrow, once told him of a pesthouse on Hartwell Street in what is known as the Fox Hill section of Plattsburgh. She said it existed before the original Physician's Hospital, sometime in the early 1900s.
So started my quest. I began by conferring with a physician friend who knew of pesthouses in general, but had no specific knowledge of their use in this area. He pointed out that only in relatively recent times has it been understood precisely how communicable diseases are spread.
Up until and even shortly after the start of the 20th century, hospitals were not widely utilized in many areas except in time of war. Babies were born at home. Doctors made house calls, and treatments for most maladies were far different than they are today.
SMALLPOX PRECAUTIONS
I met with Plattsburgh City Clerk Keith Herkalo, and he said he learned that a pesthouse was constructed at Pike's Cantonment in 1885 for smallpox but was not needed.
Together, we perused original health department and village minutes from 1901. We also looked at newspaper stories from that time. They confirmed Camp's mention of a pesthouse in the then Village of Plattsburgh's south end. We saw references to people being sent to pesthouses. One was, indeed, located at "the Hartwell tenement" located "on the west side of Catherine Street on the south bank of the river."
The health department's notes mentioned "a protest of residents in the southern part of the village against the Hartwell tenement house so-called as a pesthouse was received. Action deferred."
There were other references to the board of health securing "a house, which could be used by smallpox patients while their homes were being disinfected and the quarantine was raised."
We also reviewed articles in a local newspaper called the "Sentinel." For example, in January 1874, the board of health secured the Tarlton House on Rugar Street for a pesthouse as well.
Herkalo also quoted historical sources indicating that eight acres of land were purchased on the south side of the river on which to build a pesthouse with three wards at a cost of $1,500. He believes it was near the end of lower Broad Street and could have been in the vicinity of Saranac Street.
DEADLY CHOLERA
Suzanne "Shan" Moore of the Press-Republican wrote a well-documented treatise some years back, entitled "Champlain and the Cholera Epidemic of 1832." Then, hastily assembled boards of health in individual communities set up locations to quarantine newcomers to make sure they were healthy before allowing them to mix with locals. In Champlain and Rouses Point, hundreds of emigrants from Europe who'd arrived in North America via Montreal were held up. The large, decrepit barn used as a pesthouse in Rouses Point was considered a waste of time and funds in early days, Moore found — and then the cholera struck with a vengeance.
Moore says the 1832 scourge brought desperate times for folks living in especially hard-hit Montreal and south into our region. And in their ignorance, they battled the illness with what now seem ridiculous methods. It was recommended, for example, that a slab of beef be hung from a church steeple that would catch all the germs blowing across the ocean from Europe.
I have seen literary references to pesthouses dating back to the early 1600s in Europe. They existed in almost every municipality in America in the late 19th century, but the term pesthouse became archaic in this country by about 1910.
I discovered another word for pesthouse — lazaret. In several American cities, they have been turned into medical museums. More trivia: Liberty Island — home to the Statue of Liberty — once had a pesthouse.
And, there is a beautiful painting by Antoine-Jean Gros, dating to 1804, that is titled "Napoleon Visiting the Pesthouse at Jaffa."
I hope the next suggestion for a column is a lot easier to research. How about the transition from buttons to zippers? Yeah, I'll get to work on it.
Have a great day and please, drive carefully.
Gordie Little was for many years a well-known radio personality in the North Country and now hosts the "Our Little Corner" television program for Home Town Cable. Anyone with comments for him may send them to the newspaper or e-mail him at gordandk@aol.com.
