Smallpox Epidemic

A G.I. with ribbons on his chest had come back from Japan to Seattle. He brought smallpox with him. Result: the city's worst epidemic of the "Red Death" in years.*

Last week police were called out to control men & women who fought to queue up in immunization lines. Public vaccina tion centers were set up in schools, colleges, industrial plants and even firehouses. At week's end, five people had died, 24 more had the disease, three other "possibles" were closely watched.

San Francisco had eight cases but no deaths. When smallpox was reported aboard a naval transport which arrived bearing 1,426 home-hungry sailors and marines, alarmed health officials flatly refused to let anyone come ashore until April 1. A regular old-fashioned smallpox scare quickly started, spread up & down the coast.

But West Coast jitters did not infect the U.S. Public Health Service, which has seen cases drop from 48,907 in 1930, to 346 in 1945. Said Assistant Surgeon General R. C. Williams: "Smallpox is now practically a self-limiting disease. When ever you get a scare, everyone within 100 miles gets vaccinated."

* Seattle's worst smallpox epidemic was in 1901-02 ; 642 reported cases, four deaths.

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