The Smallpox Dog
A doctor in a smallpox hospital realizes that a stray cur visiting the wards is the vector for a new patient's infection.
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.
An interesting incident comes from the pest-house. Soon after the doctor assumed charge of the smallpox hospital, he noticed a little dog of the common cur species which appeared to be drawn there simply for the purpose of devouring food scraps. A few weeks later, a colored woman with the disease fully developed was brought to the pest-house, and the doctor noticed that the vehicle in which she arrived was followed by this same little dog. Questioning revealed she lived a mile in the country and had not been to town or seen anyone from whom she could have contracted the disease. The doctor, however, unraveled the mystery: the dog had been frequenting the pest-house and then visiting the woman's home, where she would pick it up in her arms. The moral is not hard to understand.
“A little dog, of the common cur species, which appeared to be drawn there simply for the purpose of devouring what scraps of meat, bones and other food it could pick up.”
This story, while relying on the era's medical folklore regarding 'pest-houses' and vectors, highlights the deep historical anxiety surrounding public health and contagion in developing urban centers like 1880s Seattle.
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