Emma's Secret by Veda Boyd Jones

Author:Veda Boyd Jones [JONES, VEDA BOYD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62836-200-8
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2005-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

At supper, Papa prayed for the safety of Cincinnati, then shared his news from the quarantined house.

“Dr. Drake has treated everyone on board the steamship with calomel, and the ship has anchored near the Kentucky side of the river. The dead have already been buried and all their belongings burned.”

“What’s calomel?” Emma asked.

“A laxative. It makes you go to the bathroom,” Papa explained.

Emma made a face.

“Dr. Drake says the disease feels like poisoning,” he continued. “A person’s insides hurt something fierce.”

“Can we go to school tomorrow?” Emma asked.

Mama and Papa exchanged a glance, and then Mama said, “We are not going to panic about this. Perhaps Dr. Drake can isolate the cases and it won’t spread. You can go to school, and we’ll wait and see what happens.”

“It’s not contagious,” Emma said. “It can’t be spread from one person to the next. Dr. Drake is certain of that.”

“It seems awfully strange to me,” Mother said. “I don’t understand how invisible insects can cause it. Wouldn’t the insects be carried by one person to the next? Isn’t that what contagious means? Like smallpox?”

Emma wasn’t sure herself, but she had heard Dr. Drake speak to this question many times, and she quoted his words. “Once you get smallpox, you can’t get it again. But you can catch cholera over and over.”

“Then why have the pesthouse?” Mama asked.

Papa answered that one. “It’s so the townspeople won’t panic. So that they feel there is something being done. Dr. Drake had a hard time finding a building, and the one he got is rundown. But it will serve the purpose.”

“Where is it?” Emma asked.

“On a side road, just outside of town.”

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