Drama

Publicity, like lightning, strikes unpredictably. Nome is a little city of some 5,000 inhabitants struggling down on the north shore of Norton Sound on the west coast of the Alaskan peninsula. Its harbor is icebound for a great part of the year, regular navigation being limited from about June to October. Once it was the scene of fabulous gold mines.

There about two weeks ago an Eskimo developed diphtheria. The Eskimoes are very susceptible to the white man's diseases, tin a little while other cases developed. There was only one doctor and four trained nurses to care for the sick. Worse, the supply of diphtheria antitoxin was low. In a few days all the recent anti-toxin (diphtheria anti-toxin is supposed to be efficacious for only about six months) were used up. Then .antitoxin four years old was used, then five years old, then six years-old. Then it was all gone. It does not appear that the epidemic was very virulent. Reports were contradictory, but it appeared that there were only 25 io 50 cases with about five deaths. The danger lay entirely in the spread of the disease.

But the imagination of the U.S. public was fired by the drama of the situation--the gradual decrease of the antitoxin, going like ammunition fired by a beleaguered garrison,--the desperate effort to rush more anti-toxin to the spot.

There were, including the old supply some 75,000 "units" of the antitoxin at Nome. Some 300,000 "units" were hastily gathered at Anchorage on the south shore of the peninsula and shipped northward on the Alaskan railway to Nenana. From there to Nome, 650 miles westward, stretched a snowy waste. Relays of dog teams spread over the route from Nenana, from Nome. The ordinary time for the trip was about 20 days. The record time for the trip by dog team, "mushing" was nine days.

At eleven one night, they lashed the precious 20-lb. package of anti-toxin to Bill Shannon's sled in Nenana. It was 58 degrees below zero, when he cracked his whip and the huskies strained forward, in their harness. The snow-dust rose behind them as the sled gained headway, softly gliding, speeding into the cold and disappearing into the darkness lit only by the stars above and the white snow below. For four days one man after another drove his struggling beasts onward--Bill Shannon, Ed Kellan, Jim Kalland, Dan Green, John Folger, Titus Nicolas. Such was the outbound relay.

Almost half the way out from Nome, the last of them was met by Leonard Seppala--Seppala famed winner of the Nome sweepstakes, he who had driven with one dog team, 408 miles in 78 hours and 44 minutes, 57 seconds. The precious packet of antitoxin was unlashed and restored once more in a new sled and Seppala turned his 20 Siberian huskies into the home stretch. Not much is known yet of that drive. It is known that then the weather broke for the first time and blizzard came beating down from the north in which for a time it was impossible to drive. For two days Seppalla mushed, driving the laboring dogs by the power of man's will to bear all that could be borne--to cover another mile and another, nearly 300. Twenty-one miles out, a fresh team driven by Gunnar Kasson, relieved Seppalla and made the final dash. At last the antitoxin, frozen solid was taken 'from the sled at Nome, 127 1/2 hours after it left Nenana.

Other antitoxin--1,110,000 units-was meanwhile shipped northward from Seattle and may be sent over the same route by airplane.

Thus did diphtheria antitoxin by the vehicle of a tale of the frozen north attain such popularity as few other medicines, real or legendary, saving only the elixir of life.