Doctor Questions City's Smallpox Quarantine Delay
A health officer faces a public revolt after a suspected smallpox outbreak at a local mission leads to a tense standoff and accusations of official negligence.
The story, cleaned up
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The quarantine placed on Dr. Alexander McKinnon’s boarding house at 1118 Western Avenue has lifted, and the doctor is once more on the warpath. It is claimed that the city health officer was dilatory in his duty, and that if he remained in charge of the situation, he was culpably responsible for delaying the report for 18 hours after a case of smallpox was discovered on the afternoon of July 27.
Dr. McKinnon says that the chief health officer seemed mild about the situation from the above address on Western Avenue, despite it being affected with smallpox. 'In any reliable case,' the doctor continued, 'the house was even left for 18 hours without proper medical attention.'
When Dr. McKinnon reached the house at 10 in the evening, he found the whole party in the mission house. 'The yellow sign of the deadly contagion was set within the mission; why did the watchful guardian of the city health permit the human worship at that local mission to continue to encourage themselves the fatal contagion of smallpox?' asked the doctor. 'At last, when our mothers fully saw our way, and eight hours after McKinnon, the smallpox report, City Health Officer McKinnon arrived at his office in the city hall, and nonchalantly informed all within that they must remain there for 14 days.'
The doctor then said that one of the victims of Dr. McKinnon’s watchful care escaped from the mission that day and mingled with the lighthearted citizens. It also states that the quarantined people were not vaccinated until they had been in the mission for two weeks.
“The yellow sign of the deadly contagion was set within the mission; why did the watchful guardian of the city health permit the human worship at that local mission to continue?”
Public health emergencies often expose deep rifts in municipal leadership, much like the bureaucratic and procedural frustrations Seattle faces today regarding housing, hygiene, and emergency resource management.
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