1857 — Jan beginning, “National Hotel Disease,” Dysentery?, Washington, DC — <36

—<36 U.S. House of Representatives. “The Mysterious National Hotel Disease.” (nearly 3 dozen) --<36 Wikipedia. “National Hotel disease.” 7-9-2020 edit. (“…nearly three dozen died.”) Narrative Information U.S. House: “June 24, 1859. On this date, David F. Robinson of Pennsylvania died at his Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, home of complications from the mysterious National Hotel Disease, contracted more than two years earlier at the time of President James Buchanan’s inauguration. By some accounts, nearly three dozen people died from the affliction and dozens 400 more were sickened. The National, located along Pennsylvania Avenue in between the White House and the Capitol, was one of the city’s most popular and plush hotels, serving a clientele of influential politicians, particularly southern Members of Congress. Buchanan, a former Representative from Pennsylvania once described as a ‘northern man with southern principles’ and possessing anti-abolitionist convictions, chose the National as his pre-inauguration lodgings. The President-elect and several Members of the Pennsylvania delegation -- including Robison, set to retire from Congress on March 3, 1857 -- were among the scores of hotel guests who fell ill (though Buchanan made a quick recovery). Rumors, fed by sensationalized newspaper coverage, soon emerged that victims had been poisoned by arsenic, the result of a botched assassination attempt on Buchanan by radical abolitionists. ‘From every quarter of the country come in denunciations of what is styled -- not without warrant,’ blared the New York Times, ‘the determination on the part of interested parties to stifle inquiry and hoodwink suspicion concerning what has every appearance of being the most gigantic and startling crime of the age.’ Medical experts now believe the disease outbreak to have been caused by dysentery because of the hotel’s primitive sewage system. In an age when scientists and doctors knew little about bacterial infections and how to treat them, dysentery was a dangerous affliction. The National Hotel Disease claimed two other victims in the House – John G. Montgomery of Pennsylvania, who died in April 1857 not long after becoming sick, and John Quitman of Mississippi who died the following summer from after-effects.” (U.S. House of Representatives. “The Mysterious National Hotel Disease.”) Newspaper March 23, NYT: “New York, Saturday, March 21, 1857. “The epidemic which recently visited Washington City, and by which so many of the guests at the National Hotel were affected, has attracted such wide attention that I have though a more particular notice of it than any hitherto published would prove interesting and acceptable. The general facts are already known. The disease is diarrhoea of an unusually obstinate type, accompanied frequently by severe colic, always by marked and sudden prostration, and generally by nausea and other symptoms indicating exceeding weakness and sensitiveness of the stomach. In most cases the tongue of the patient is found by the physician to denote more of less inflammation of the mucous membrane of he stomach. Different subjects present many modifications of this group of symptoms, but the foregoing were found to exist in greater or less degree in nearly all. Various theories have been discussed with a view to ascertaining the cause of the sickness, all of which I propose to glance at int the course of this communication. “The disease first made its appearance early in January, during a season of very variable weather, subject to extraordinary changes of temperature; and, I man add, at a season when gayety and dissipation in Washington were at the full tide. It did not spread far, however, until about the middle of the month, immediately after the great thaw which succeeded the severe snow storm of that season. At this time the hotel was full, containing, I should suppose, some four or five hundred guests. The building, as is well known, is old-fashioned, awkward, and not well arranged for comfort, convenience or perfect ventilation. But the enterprising lessees, Messrs. Guy and Briggs – by dint of extensive repairs and refurbishing, and watchful attention to the conduct of the house in its various departments – managed to overcome these serious drawbacks to public favor, and to secure a contented as well as numerous house hold. The tables were served with care and neatness, the viands well cooked, and the dining rooms compared favorably in all respects with the best hotels in that section. Frequently the guests – of whom I was one – complained of the foul air in the passages during a foggy day when the weather was damp and the atmosphere heavy, or when we had a day or two of unusually warm weather for the season. Still, scarcely anybody thought of fearing an epidemic as the result an any apparent cause. “Somewhere about the 15th or 20th of January, the regular boarders began to be taken down in large numbers daily, and by the first week of February there were very few of them who were not suffering severely. Among the number were President Buchanan, Senator Hale and family, Senator James and family, Senator Brown and family, Senator Bayard’s family, Hon. J. Clancy Jones and family, Senator Fessenden, Horace H. Day, of New York, and friends, Marshall O. Roberts, Cyrus W. Field, and probably two or three hundred others. My own family were among the sufferers, and two of my children are even now but just recovering, after an illness of two months. One characteristic of the complaint is that the patient, after being quite recovered, and even when removed from the locality in which he was first afflicted, is suddenly prostrated by a return of the ailing with all its original malignity. ‘I can’t get well and stay well,’ is the almost universal exclamation of the sufferers, who have proved, perhaps, by half a dozen relapses, the ‘vanity of human hopes.’ As may readily be supposed, the National Hotel soon became depopulated, for its old boarders either left the city or changed their quarters; and as rumor, with its thousand exaggerating tongues, carried the story in every direction, stranger guests soon learned to avoid this house. Ruin stared its proprietors in the face – ruin, made doubly dark and hopeless by the thousand idle stories as to the cause of the sickness, which discharged servants and other petty enemies embraced the occasion to circulate – thus not only destroying the business of the establishment, but creating the supposition that the sickness was a consequence of some culpable neglect or carelessness on the part of thee hosts. It is but jut to say that they took early measures to discover the cause of the sickness, and never remitted them for a day. “But now there came a change. Soon after the middle of February the disease began to abate. Few or no new cases occurred, and there was a general improvement in the old ones. So marked was this favorable change that by the last of the month the panic was allayed, public confidence was restored, and the National filled again to overflowing. It was while the house was thus crowded by those who thronged to witness the Inauguration pageant that the disease broke out again, with all its original violence, and hundreds are still suffering in consequence; even counting out the host of men who spent their week at Washington in scenes of reckless dissipation, soaking in bad rum, turning night into day, and their stomachs into swill tubs – but all of whom will for all time to come declare that they were ‘poisoned at the National,’ and wonder at their providential escape. “Before proceeding to consider the various theories upon which different parties have accounted for the epidemic, let me remark that it was not confined exclusively to the National Hotel. On the contrary, disease of the stomach and bowels was quite prevalent at the same time in different parts of he city, -- disease accompanied by precisely the same group of symptoms, marked by the same malignity and obstinacy, and affected by the same classes of remedies. Among my own acquaintances I know of several cases elsewhere. At Brown’s Hotel there were quite a number soon after the January thaw, -- but they yielded readily to medical treatment. At Willard’s Hotel there were several cases, although pains were taken to conceal the fact. Among the sufferers at this house I may mention Dr. Chaffee, a Representative in Congress from Massachusetts, who found it necessary to resort to very violent remedies to check the complaint. Persons doing business on the avenue near the National Hotel, and who were in the habit of frequenting the house without partaking of food there, were similarly affected; and even the barbers who occupy a shop in the house, but had no other connection with it, were forced to ‘follow the fashion.’ These facts are important when we come to consider the cause of the disease, -- because they seem to furnish us as a basis of investigation the simple suggestion at least, that there may have been at Washington some general cause producing irritation of the stomach and bowels, which, combined with some other local cause at the National Hotel, produced the serious aggravation of the symptoms in patients living at that house. “Let us now examine the theories upon which it has been sought to account for the troubles. To do so justly, we must discard entirely the hundred reports to the effect that John Smith who ‘ate a single meal at the National,’ has sine died, and that a post mortem examination showed half his stomach and kidneys to have been eaten away by arsenic.’ This sort of nonsense is at once discarded by every intelligent physician, and is entitled to no weight. If we seek to get at the truth it will be necessary to draw out deductions from well established facts, for which we have some responsible author, rather than from theses uncertain, indefinite rumors. The first theory which obtained, was based upon the rat-poisoning story which I exposed a few days ago. To recapitulate, briefly; it was said that arsenic had been used to rid the hotel of rats, that the vermin, having partaken of the poisoned bait, jumped into the water tank from which the house was supplied, and so administered to the guests the poison which had already murdered the four-footed animals. This story – originating with a discharged servant, and named so as to be greedily swallowed by the panic-stricken sick – had no foundation. The tank in question is utterly inaccessible to vermin of any kind, and was carefully cleansed every day. Nor was the water from this tank used for drinking or cooking purposes, this being supplied direct, in pipes, from a clear, sweet and abundant spring which wells out of the earth some hundreds of feet from the hotel. Besides, I may say that the arsenic story never was credited by the Washington physicians, who found present none of the symptoms of poisoning by that drug. “The next favorite theory was that of copper poisoning, consequent upon the use of copper cooking utensils. This had, for a time, many disciples, including one or two physicians, although it, also, was repudiated by most of the faculty at Washington. Some of the boarders, including a well-known gentleman of this City, -- all thoroughly convinced that the source of the trouble would be found in the kitchen, and fully prepared to see the cooking utensils covered with verdigris, -- constituted themselves a Committee to make examination. They reported at once that that found the place de cuisine in the best possible condition, -- the tables clean enough to eat from, the utensils nearly all tinned to prevent corrosion, and the entire department in excellent order. One of the gentlemen thought he discovered appearances of verdigris in the greasy deposit which collected upon the soup kettle just at the surface of the liquid compound, then undergoing the process of manufacture. This, he feared, might result from the wearing-off of the tinning and the exposure of the copper in some spots in the soup kettle. Accordingly, he scraped up a quantity of the suspicious material for further examination; but a careful analysis by Dr. Antisell, of the Smithsonian Institution, failed to discover the least trace of copper. Other analysis by the Doctor, of selections made at the same time from milk, meats and game, failed to find any mineral poison whatever, or to discover any cause of disease. The result of his analysis of the water in use I shall refer to in another place. “This seemed to dispose of the copper theory; and although I have conversed with ten or a dozen physicians who have attended the sufferers by this disease, I have found none who were entirely ready to accept that theory as the true one, and few who would listen to it at all; while all of them that the symptoms would be more likely to be produced by either of several other causes. But these conclusions did not satisfy the sufferers that they were not poisoned. Sick, debilitated, nervous and cross, many of them were determined to be poisoned anyhow. Indeed, it would seem to have been a point of honor with them to maintain the idea – just as though to be sick without aid or arsenic or copper was equivalent to disgrace. These got the notion that some malicious wretch, envious of the prosperity of the house, or some enemy of its proprietors, was infusing poison stealthily and regularly into the food, at such times that discovery was difficult. The idleness of this supposition is exposed by the fact that so many parties who never ate a mouthful in the house suffered equally with those who dined daily. Besides, it is incredible that anybody having the opportunity to be guilty of so fiendish an act would have escaped the close scrutiny which was observed to detect any such villainy: for if that is the cause of the sickness, the administrations of poison must have been made at least three times a day for two months past – else how happens it that the progress of the disease has been so steady, and its effects so universal and so lasting? “Finally, we come to the theory which for one I have adopted after land and – I confess it – somewhat emaciated consideration, and which it seems to me will commend itself to the judgement of those who have followed me closely in my rapid history of the epidemic. It is the theory which the physicians of Washington generally maintain, and which has been vindicated by the Board of Health of that city. And, by the way, this Board made their first examination of the hotel on or about the 20th February. At that time their attention was not addressed to the subject of the sewerage, and they reported unanimously that they could discover no local cause of disease. Now, upon thorough examination, they declare their conviction that the sickness is consequent upon the mephitic vapor generated in the sewers, sicks and cesspools connecting with the hotel. “The following statement I believe will establish the accuracy of these conclusions, will be found entirely consistent with the well ascertained facts, and account for the greater prevalence of the disease at the National, notwithstanding it was found elsewhere in the city at the same time, without becoming epidemic in other localities. Every stranger who goes to Washington is at first subject to relaxation of the bowels, and sometimes to serious irritation. This is clearly traceable to the quality of the water, which is chiefly supplied by surface springs, and is highly charged with earthy salts, which make it, in fact, a modified mineral water. On the occasion of heavy rains or thaws, this peculiarity is aggravated by the surface waster flowing into the springs. Sudden changes of temperature, subjecting one to colds, and calculated to debilitate, are of themselves promotives of disorders of the digestive organs. When the disease broke out at Washington both these irritating causes were present, -- the thaw succeeding the great snow carrying quantities of surface water to the springs, and the variable temperature and sudden changes of weather contributing its quota of the trouble. Dr. Antisell, the chemist of the Smithsonian Institution, after analyzing the water at the time he did the soup, meat, &c., gave his written opinion that the medicinal quality of the spring waster was quite sufficient of itself to produce serious irritation and disease of the digestive organs. Here, then, we have an ascertained cause for the general malady. But, we must yet account for its special malignity at the National. “The sewerage of Washington is generally very good. The main sewer, however, running by the National, has very little fall to the Canal – distant about two squares – which is the common receptacle of the sewer’s contents. Of course much of the solid deposits entering in the sewer is apt to remain there until a flooding rain (such as we do not get in Winter) furnishes a stream to wash it out. These deposits evolve large quantities of mephitic vapor, which, of necessity, must escape somewhere. In former years it escaped by the gutter openings into the sewer, placed at the street corners. Last Autumn these were modified by the insertion of stench traps, which prevent the escape of the noxious vapor into the street, and compel it to seek other outlet. This it finds ordinarily, although with difficulty, at the point where the sewer debouches into the Canal; but when the outlet there is closed, there is but one other direction in which it can find outlet, and that is by the house connections with the sewer into the hotel itself, where it poisons the air, and sows the seeds of disease among all who are subject thereto. “Here is the point of the story. A high tide, caused, for instance, by a strong south wind, or a freshet which raises the Potomac River and the water of the canal with it, closes the only proper outlet for the contents of the sewer. Indeed, a strong south wind, blowing directly into the mouth of the sewer, which opens through the stone wall of the Canal, would have much the same effect. Of these periods of high water we had several just at the time when the disease at the National appeared and made its more rapid progress. As I have already said, the epidemic was at its height soon after the thaw which succeeded the great snow-storm of January; and it will be remembered that this thaw resulted in a remarkable freshet, which kept the river raised several feet for a number of days, carrying away bridges, and doing much other damage. Closing the mouth of the sewer, as it did, and keeping it closed for some time, the mephitic vapor necessarily found its way into the hotel, and at once spread the epidemic. From all these facts the conclusions may reasonably be drawn: First, that the water of Washington and the variable temperature produced their natural effect of predisposing residents at Washington, and particularly strangers, to disease of the stomach and bowels; hence the sickness elsewhere in the city, and the origin of the disease at the National. Subsequently, when the guests at this house – thus prepared for the reception and vigorous development of any noxious influence – were forced to take into their lungs such draughts of mephitic vapor, the difficulty which elsewhere was slight became a serious epidemic. If any more rational theory can be suggested, the public will doubtless be glad to hear it. Meantime these suggestions may contribute something to the general fund of information on the subject. S.” (New York Times. “The Washington Epidemic. Full Account of the Recent Sickness at Washington.” 3-23-1857, p. 2, col. 1-2.) Sources New York Times. “The Washington Epidemic.” 3-23-1857, p. 2, col. 1-2. Accessed 9-19-2020 at: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1857/03/23/78940891.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 United States House of Representatives. History, Art & Archives. “The Mysterious National Hotel Disease.” Office of the Historian. Accessed 9-19-2020 at: https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-Mysterious-National-Hotel-Disease/ Walters, Kerry. Outbreak in Washington, D.C.: The 1857 Mystery of the National Hotel Disease. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014. Google preview accessed 9-19-2020 at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Outbreak_in_Washington_D_C/hRh3CQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22National+Hotel%22+Epidemic,+American+Journal+of+the+Medical+Sciences,+January+1858,&printsec=frontcover Wikipedia. “National Hotel disease.” 7-9-2020 edit. Accessed 9-19-2020 at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hotel_disease