1893-1894 - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

APPENDIX. 191
poiKMU'd the wutt'r so that lish could not be caught, they cut oti'the food
supply from the outer world, at the same tiuie that they were spreading
consternation and alarm by their persistent and ofttimes nearly successful
attempts to make a Ijreach in the walls.
At last one man of their number,
formerly a slave who had been liberated by them in an early
attack on the city, at the risk of his life climbed up the arches of the
aqueduct and made a breach in it, and the great city of Carthage was
deprived of its water sui)[)ly.
Disaster and death, an end of the war worse than a breach in the walls
and the sack of the city, threatened the inhabitants, the people who had
failed to do their duty.
So in despair they made sacrifice to Moloch.
Innocent little children,
in nowise connected with or responsible for the events that were frightening
the lives out of these people, were cast into the fire to appease the
wrath of the oflended god. Tender women, their babes at tlie breast,
slaves from the factories and mines, prisoners from the cells, made food
for the flames of this fanatic ignorance. At last they went again to
Hamilcar, their great general, whom for jealous}' and envy of his fame
and power they had set aside, and besought him to save them from the
destruction that seemed inuninent.
He took charge, and after a series of
battles, fierce conflicts set in order by his great genius and arranged to
the minutest detail by his great experience, he drove the hordes from
the walls into the plains and thence into the mountain fastnesses, to
their death.
We burn sulphur and spread disinfecting solutions; we open the doors
for the fresh air and the windows for the sunlight; we spend days and
nights watching the sick, these victims to the Moloch of disease, and
we recklessly pour the dejections from a tyjjhoid fever patient, undisinfected,
or carelessly done, on the ground at random, where the next
rain will take up the poison and wash it into the water we or our neighbors
drink; or it is dried, and the winds waft about the poisonous germs
mayhap, and a new victim tells the tale of the reckless want of cai-e.
A child lies sick of diphtheria. It is too much trouble to disinfect
one's person or change clothes when the room is left. The nurse comes
in contact with the other little children and a new case appears. It is
too much trouble, it is said, to take up the carpets and carefully destroy
the cloths on which the child
expectorates or discharges the irritating
fluid from its nose.
Another has scarlet fever. It is a sore trial to shut the door always
against one's incoming and unwise friends and against one's own occasional
escape. Trifling disinfection is done. False economy says don't
destroy all these clothes and bedding; wash them; that is what this
one or that one did, and they escaped. The doctors are unnecessarily
particular they say. Alas! the enemy is still left hammering down the
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