January 28, 1916 LETTER 126 YEARS OLD DESCRIBES PREVALENCE OF LAGRIPPE Many of us are prone to believe that lagrippe is a comparatively new disease and this it made its first appearance in this country thirty years ago, this opinion even being held by many reputable physicians and other medical authorities of today. Below we publish an excerpt from a letter written November 30, 1789 by Dr. John Scott of Chestertown, Maryland, to his son, Dr. Edward Scott, a student of physics at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The writer of this old letter was the great grandfather of Mr. P D Scott of this city, while the medical student to whom it was addressed was Mr. Scott’s grandfather, and it was through the courtesy of Mrs. P D Scott that the Press-Argus is permitted to republish it as a matter of historical worth and should prove very interesting to the medical profession and our readers at large, the majority of whom have recently suffered violent attacks of this old disease. The letter follows: "The Influenza as yet prevails, and sweeps off whole Familys in the forest of Queen Ann, Kent, Talbot & etc. The symptoms you mention are the same with us, but a putrifaction diathesis in many cases soon come on, such as great sickness of the stomach, head and dibility and in many cases in the beginning a soreness and rawness all around the fauces, breast, throat and stomach with the greatest degree of irritation in the stomach, so that no medicine whatever that had stimuli could be taken or kept on the stomach. There is no doubt but real specific contagion took place or why should every person in the family get the disease. The earth with us having been long dry, the night dews and rain coming on have occasion miasmata to mix with the air, the bad state of the air gave the septic tendency of the disease, and proved so fatal here. Miss Mollie Telghman was buried yesterday. In the inflamatory stage of the complaint we bled and even repeated it with success, but there were many cases tho the difficult breathing and severe pain in the breast, and incessant cough continued in which we could not venture on bleeding. Small doses of Tartar and Laund’n were after given with success, together with Nitre and large blisters to the heart, & etc. I have lost none under it yet. Wine, Wine whey, with a cordial supporting diet, under the latter stage of the disease answered well together with the use of Rad. Serp. V. when the pulse had sunk and in some cases the bard added, tho, this last medicine seldom answers where the breathing continued difficult, and there was an interrupted circulation, the lungs stuffed with mucus, & etc. Dr. Anderson has recovered." ESCAPED MURDERER WRITES PENITENTIARY OFFICIAL Little Rock, January 25.- Warden Broadnax, at the State Penitentiary on Monday received a letter from Lee Blount, one of the 24 state convicts who escaped from the farm at Cummins last week. The letter was mailed on a train leaving Little Rock Sunday night, and said that he was willing to surrender to the authorities and return to the penitentiary, if they would agree to pay the $50 reward to his wife. He said further that he would call them up by long distance telephone Monday, but he failed to do so. The penitentiary officials believed they had located him in the vicinity of his old home at Mayflower, Faulkner County, and left for that place last night to apprehend him. Blount, accounted one of the most desperate convicts in the penitentiary, is serving 21 years for murder. Fran Alverson Warren e-mail: alverson@valuelinx.net 479-369-2703 http://www.crawfordcountyarkansas.net/