Smallpox Scare at Providence Hospital
A laborer misdiagnosed with measles is found to have smallpox, triggering a full-scale sanitization effort at a local Seattle hospital.
A case of smallpox was discovered at Providence hospital yesterday. John Johnson, a laborer, aged 25 years, who lives on the Grant street bridge, was brought to the hospital on Friday, believed to be suffering from measles. The sisters who waited on him believed from the symptoms that the disease was smallpox, and called in Health Officer Sparling and Dr. E. L. Smith. The doctors examined the man and pronounced the disease to be confluent smallpox of the worst type, and caused his removal to the pest house. He had been sick for several days before he was taken to the hospital, but the nature of his disease was not discovered sooner because it takes four or five days to develop. Everything he had used was destroyed, the room was thoroughly fumigated, and all the clothes which the sister had worn while waiting on him were burned, so that there is no danger of the spread of the infection.
“Everything he had used was destroyed, the room was thoroughly fumigated, and all the clothes which the sister had worn while waiting on him were burned.”
In 1892, 'pest houses' were the standard civic tool for managing contagious outbreaks. This incident captures the extreme measures (burning clothes and room fumigation) required to manage public health before modern medicine.
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