The Day Smallpox Walked the Streets: How One Man’s Ignorance Sparked Spokane’s Deadliest Epidemic
A drunk man wandering through downtown Spokane with a rash on his face nearly triggered a disaster that killed hundreds—until a sharp-eyed pharmacist stepped in.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
SPOKANE, Wash., March 10: The present smallpox scare might have been a disaster had it not been for prompt action. It began when Daniel Daniels, a local drunkard, fell ill and wandered away from his lodging, spending an entire day mingling with the public before being found delirious at his boarding house.
This was not the first outbreak in Spokane; during the winter of 1890-91, the disease ran rampant for three months. Over 300 people were attacked, and about ten percent died. The exact figures are lost because the municipal health department records were burned in the great fire that followed shortly after.
Dr. C.O. Brown, who was not the city physician but was in charge of sufferers during this latest scare, explained how close they came to disaster again. "A patient, a drunkard, came up from Hall Lake. He was not feeling well and had been running around the old O.N. Hotel stables where half a dozen other men were established. Instead of getting help, he grew worse, and a rash became noticeable on his face."
Wandering down town, he stumbled into the drug store in the little frame building that is now the Ziegler block. He asked for some sort of salve for the eruption. The druggist, fortunately, was acquainted with smallpox and recognized that the man was suffering from a well-developed case. He called in the physician, and the patient was removed at once to an improvised hospital in an old frame building near the fair grounds.
The contagion spread among the original patient during his incubation period, but it took three months to force out this attempt at an outbreak. The trouble in handling smallpox today is that the disease may develop in a sufferer who may spread the germ before he himself knows he is ill. Thus, the person continues to distribute the plague before it makes its appearance in him, and in that way the disease is difficult of handling. Ordinarily, the contagion is distributed only by direct contact with the patient or with some of the clothing or utensils which he has used.
This 1903 account highlights how public health crises often hinge on individual moments of awareness and quick action. The story of Daniel Daniels serves as a grim reminder that infectious diseases do not discriminate by class or sobriety, and that the 'incubation period'—when one is contagious but unaware—is the most dangerous phase of any epidemic, a reality we faced all too recently.
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