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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 1 |
| 1878 | 1 |
| 1883 | 1 |
| 1889 | 1 |
| 1892 | 1 |
| 1895 | 3 |
| 1903 | 1 |
| 1909 | 1 |
| 1915 | 1 |
12 stories matching disinfect
- Scarlet Fever Closes In on Seattle's Schools
Forty cases since April 1 and the tally still climbing — the city's health officer orders two school buildings disinfected, then finds he cannot get the supplies to do it.
- The Silent Dangers of Seattle’s Early Boarding Houses
A 19th-century public health warning reveals the grim reality of sanitation in early Seattle, where overcrowded and poorly drained boarding houses became breeding grounds for typhoid fever.
- A Town Under Quarantine
Ten diphtheria cases, closed schools and churches, and a council backing its health officer as Newport tries to stop the outbreak.
- The War on the Codlin Moth
A state fruit inspector’s crusade against blighted orchards in Dayton sparks a legal showdown over diseased trees.
- The Blight That Swept the Highlands
As pear trees wither overnight, local orchardists warn that only immediate, coordinated action can save the region's agricultural heart.
- Walla Walla to Build New County Poor House
After inspecting neighboring Whitman County, local commissioners decide to move from a contract-based system to a county-owned brick facility.
- Smallpox Scare in Downtown Seattle
A man arriving from San Francisco by steamship causes a panic after seeking help for symptoms at a local physician's office.
- The Horse That Stopped a City: How an Epidemic Ground Seattle to a Halt
In October 1872, a mysterious disease swept through the Pacific Northwest, paralyzing streetcars and commerce. As merchants turned to oxen and hand carts, the Territory of Washington faced its first major public health crisis.
- The 1878 State of the City: Seattle’s Growing Pains
Mayor O.A. Weed’s annual report reveals a city wrestling with debt, smallpox, and the urgent need for a real fire engine.
- Seattle Shut Every School to Stop Scarlet Fever
In May 1895 the health board ordered public, private and parochial schools closed, then ran into questions about quarantine, teachers' salaries and who would pay for a contagious-disease hospital.
- The Slave Smuggler's Lie: A Seattle Sailor’s Close Call on the Congo
In a gripping first-person account reprinted in local papers, a young American sailor recounts his terrifying encounter with a slave ship off the coast of Africa, where he nearly fell for a deceitful mate's story to avoid a deadly confrontation.
- The Board of Health Weighed Closing Every School in Seattle
Scarlet fever was moving through the city's classrooms in May 1895, and the men who ran public health argued over whether to send thousands of children home for six weeks — and whether parents could be trusted to report the sickness at all.
Also about this, in other words
- The Diphtheria Menace in Pioneer Seattle
A century and a half ago, Seattle residents faced a terrifying invisible contagion, with the newspaper urging 'sanitary' precautions that eerily mirror modern public health guidance.
- The Price of a Filthy City
In 1877, Seattle editors warned that stagnant water and neglected gutters were more than just a nuisance—they were a matter of life and death.
- The 'Disgusting Custom' of Victorian Child-Kissing
As diphtheria claimed lives along the Pacific Coast, public health experts in 1877 issued a stark warning against social rituals that helped the contagion spread.
- The Price of Neglect: Seattle's 1877 Health Crisis
As diphtheria sweeps through a growing Seattle, an 1877 editorial warns that city-wide sanitation failures and individual negligence are turning the climate's natural health into a breeding ground for disease.
- The Queen City’s Clean Bill of Health
Dr. L. Smith argues that Seattle’s location is its best sanitary defense, even as the city lacks a formal sewer system.
- The State Germ Lab in the Burke Block
Seattle's new bacteriological laboratory tested city water, hunted typhoid and tried to make diphtheria antitoxin—while its doctors covered the rent.
- A Sanitary Sermon for Kennewick
City Health Officer F.M. Crosby issues a biblical-style list of ten ordinances to combat filth and disease.
- Typhoid Outbreak Traced to Wapato Creek Dairies
City and state health officials issue urgent sanitation ultimatum to local dairymen after tracing typhoid fever cases to contaminated creek water.