Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 762 The Great Western Wilderness ([-])

The whole month of May was spent in the hard work of the pioneers.After this month, there were no new immigration ships from South Africa, and this year's eastern immigration work officially ended.And in July, the convoy to Europe will bring another batch of immigrants (mostly female slaves) and supplies back to the mainland on the east coast. At that time, the official immigration activities will officially end.

When the immigration activities came to an end, the autumn harvest of soybeans in the Great Western Wilderness area also entered a state of war.The horse-drawn soybean harvester leased by the company is already in place, and the agricultural workers have been recharging their batteries for a long time before they can be officially started.However, at this time, an unexpected disease suddenly broke out.

On May 5, scarlet fever, one of the twelve common infectious diseases on the East Coast clearly recorded by the Ministry of Health, suddenly broke out in a shack full of Italian workers.After the news came out, the patrol police immediately dispatched and took strict isolation measures: the house where the disease broke out was immediately sealed off, and the patrol police stood guard to prevent the sick workers in the house from having any form of contact with outside residents until these people were infected. until the disease is cured or the specified isolation period is reached.

During this period, only one doctor from both farms is allowed in and out of the house, but the doctor must also observe strict precautions to avoid taking germs out of the ward.For this reason, the staff of the Health Bureau of the Regional Administration and the Regional Administrative Office who rushed to the farm and came on horseback after hearing the news prepared multiple sets of medical gowns and simple disinfection facilities inside and outside the house.

The wages of the workers in isolation were paid as usual, and a supply of water was also delivered by the patrol guards guarding them.After the quarantine period expires, all household items in this sick house will be strictly disinfected.What’s more, after the sick worker left the house after the isolation period expired, the patrol police would be ordered to burn down the whole house—it was a simple and worthless shack anyway—to prevent any germs from infecting others again.

This is not alarmist talk, and people on the east coast have suffered from this kind of loss-certainly in the old settlements.Since the newly opened land has been barren for tens of millions of years, the uninhabited land is relatively lightly polluted, and the number of germs is relatively small.Therefore, in these frontier pioneering points, most of the diseases came from the newly immigrated residents, just like the outbreak of scarlet fever this time, the diseases probably came from the Italian workers introduced by Valentino from the Old World.These people obviously did not show any symptoms when they were quarantined at the pier, or they were infected by others while they were at the pier. In short, there has never been an outbreak of this infectious disease among the less than 500 original residents in the shrub farm. This terrible infectious disease can only be brought in by others from the outside world.

Compared with new pioneering points, the incidence of various infectious diseases in local old settlements is often much higher.The residents of the East Coast Republic are industrious, tenacious, and fearless. The harsh natural environment and hard work cannot knock them down, but the invisible and intangible diseases are destroying their will wantonly.These diseases were prevalent mainly among children and the elderly, infectious diseases such as measles, smallpox, scarlet fever and diphtheria, and among the young and middle-aged mainly yellow fever, and occasionally some terrible injuries, dysentery and cholera.

In the second half of last year, a terrible cholera epidemic broke out in Ping'an County in the north.The original source of infection is believed to have come from the Portuguese in the northern Gerard Mountains. This wholesaler of small commodities caused a catastrophe in the two densely populated towns of Baoan Township and Pingan Township.A total of 600 people were quarantined after being infected. At that time, the production of the entire industrial area was affected to a certain extent. The patrolmen rushed out to block the isolated blocks, and the county militia brigade was mobilized urgently. The scene was no less than a small war.

Doctors and nurses from neighboring counties and townships were also urgently transferred to Ping'an County to help. The infusion vial technique that had just been popularized in the East Coast was applied to the treatment of cholera, but the effect was still not satisfactory in general.In the past, when there was no bottle infusion technology, the overall mortality rate of cholera in the east coast was maintained at about 75%, but now with this technology, the mortality rate has only been reduced to 66%, and a large number of people infected with the virus People died one after another, including some skilled workers—a move that was especially deplored by Qian Hao, the county's magistrate.

And just after emergency measures were taken and the disease was contained in the urban areas, cholera epidemics resumed in the countryside.Especially those villages where Guarani hired workers live are the hardest-hit areas, with a death rate of almost 100%.What's even more frightening is that the Guaraní people have concealed the disease because they don't trust the doctors on the east bank, or they are afraid that the army on the east bank will isolate these sick villages.They secretly buried the corpses of the dead outside the village, or let some sick people carry a certain amount of water to go to the mountains alone, cut off communication with the village, in an attempt to conceal the fact of the outbreak of the disease in this way, and passively Wait for the disease to go away naturally.

But such hasty countermeasures are obviously extremely irresponsible. Instead of concealing the disease, it became widespread in the surrounding areas on a large scale.Not only did the Guaraní, who were less resistant to the disease, fall ill and die in large numbers, but many of the East Coast residents who settled near them also fell ill—because some of the sick Guaraní fled the village and then brought the Otherwise, with the population density of the east coast countryside, any kind of infectious disease would not be so easy to spread.

After the incident became serious, the Beiyazihu ​​Regional Administrative Office dispatched patrol police to quickly block all roads, intercept all suspicious elements and isolate them on the spot.At the same time, the Ministry of War ordered the Xihu County militia brigade next door to deploy two squadrons to Meihe Township, where the disease was most serious, and sealed off the confirmed and suspected sick villages.Among them, the Dong'an people's own villages were fully checked by doctors, while the Guarani villages were immediately blocked, and anyone who disobeyed was shot immediately.

Most of the doctors from the three counties in the Duck Lake Basin were mobilized to Meihe Township. Wearing strictly sterilized medical gowns, they went to the almost extinct Guarani villages to collect the dead bodies and perform autopsies to identify them. cause of death.At the same time, another team was sent out of the village to find the bodies of the sick who had been disposed of by the Guaranís.Those that were not buried were buried immediately, and the hastily dug tombs were also reinforced, and finally they were uniformly disinfected by special personnel.

After experiencing this incident, the health department of the east coast has increased the popularization of common infectious diseases among urban and rural residents.For example, the terrible disease of cholera, which was once regarded as a common stomach disease or acute abdomen, often caused great disasters.By the time the disease is diagnosed, things are often out of control. Therefore, proper science popularization and medical emergency measures are the only way to deal with such vicious epidemics.It is not easy to accumulate a population on the small east coast. If there are such a few large-scale epidemics every month, then this country will have nothing to do, just grit its teeth and struggle with the disease all day long.

The incident also had an unexpected side effect.That is, the tolerance of the East Coast residents to the Guarani people has been greatly reduced. They began to exclude the Guarani people from entering the territory of the East Coast Republic to settle down or look for job opportunities. The Nepalese are cold-eyed and make verbal insults or personal attacks, but the government often turns a blind eye to this.Although these Guarani people are also victims of infectious diseases, those Guarani villages or even whole villages died of illness, but the residents on the east coast who lost their relatives will not think differently, they only need to know these Guarani People are "unknown" and have brought disaster on themselves, so they need to be expelled.The situation of the Guarani people seems to have deteriorated significantly overnight!

At the beginning of June, the staff of the Health Bureau of the District Administrative Office visited the Dahuang Farm and the Shrub Farm and found that the scarlet fever did not break out in other places, which made everyone feel relieved.Now the population of these two farms is increasing, and the number of old people and children is also increasing rapidly.The recurring East Coast epidemics of measles, smallpox, scarlet fever, and diphtheria, while not particularly troublesome to adults, clearly lead to serious health problems among frail children. A large number of premature deaths.In recent years, the mortality rate of infants and young children in the counties and townships of the East Coast Republic has remained high. It may not be that there is no "credit" for these recurrent diseases that torment the people of the East Coast.

Among these terrible diseases, except for smallpox, which can be slightly suppressed by vaccinia (the effect is not too obvious), the rest of the diseases are often helpless. Every year, a large number of newborns on the east coast cannot get rid of the torture of various diseases and die. .Especially in those old settlements with a relatively large population, relatively more serious pollution, and relatively more frequent population movements, the incidence of diseases is quite high, and a large number of infants and young children die.

Whenever the symptoms of the disease appear, the patrolmen often face the enemy and strictly confine the patient and his family members to their own houses to minimize the possibility of infection.Of course, the above is the limit of what they can do. The East Coast government’s research on diseases and germs is still very superficial—they don’t even have a high-magnification medical microscope, and the research and development of various targeted drugs is also slow. These are the reasons for the frequent occurrence of diseases and the high mortality rate.

Fortunately, the east coast is still a sparsely populated New World area. If it is in the densely populated Old World, a large-scale epidemic can often severely damage a city's vitality.In the records of this era, the number of deaths is tens of thousands or even 10,000+. Epidemics (the spread is extremely small, but the death rate is very high) abound. Every time an epidemic breaks out on the east coast, there are only a few tens of hundreds at most. The number of deaths has fully demonstrated that the government is operating efficiently and the measures are effective.

On June 1649, 6, the Xiling District Administrative Office lifted the quarantine order, announcing that the scarlet fever had been extinguished in the bud before a large-scale outbreak occurred.At the same time, the "Pioneer 20" soybeans widely planted in the Great Western Wilderness area also had a bumper harvest, and everyone from farm operators to ordinary agricultural employees was beaming with joy.

(End of this chapter)