• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 427 0

the Kentucky Board of Health said, “We hesitated to give you absolute control because of the ineffectual methods adopted by your Service in Alabama, which had permitted the present epidemic in Tennessee and Kentucky.” If this complaint was genuine, McCormack was acting on erroneous information. The arrival of the miner Scott in Middlesboro preceded the Service’s takeover at Birmingham by at least two months. Secretary McCormack to WW, Apr. 9, 1898, published in KBOH 1898–99, 59.

62 “Three New Cases of Smallpox,” AC, Jul. 29, 1897, 3. G. M. Magruder, “Smallpox in Birmingham, Ala.,” PHR, 13 (Jan. 14, 1898), 22–25.

63 G. M. Magruder, “Work of the Service in Suppressing Smallpox in Alabama,” PHR, 13 (Mar. 18, 1898), 246–51. See also “Three New Cases of Smallpox,” AC, Jul. 29, 1897, 3; “Smallpox Scare in Birmingham,” ibid., Aug. 7, 1897, 2; “Prevent Smallpox Spread,” ibid., Aug. 8, 1897, 2; “Why Smallpox Is Not Checked,” ibid., Aug. 9, 1897, 2; “Wyman Sends Surgeons South,” ibid., Jan. 7, 1898, 1; “Pest Prevails in Alabama,” ibid., Jan. 14, 1898, 2.

64 Magruder, “Work of the Service,” esp. 246–47, 250.

65 Ibid., 247–48.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid., 248–50.

68 Ibid., 250. The white cases equaled 57.5 percent of the total reported cases. The U.S. Census of 1900 found that 45.2 percent of the population of Alabama was black. Negroes in the United States, 20.

69 C. P. Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,—(Continued.),” PHR, 13 (Apr. 1, 1898), 300–303. “Locals,” MWR, Mar. 24, 1898, 1.

70 Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,—(Continued.),” 301. “A Decided Improvement,” MWR, Mar. 24, 1898, 4.

71 Hill Hastings, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.—(Concluded.),” PHR, 13 (Apr. 22, 1898), 379–81, esp. 379. Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,—(Continued.),” 300. “Decided Improvement.”

72 Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,—(Continued.),” 301–2. Hastings, “Smallpox at Middlesborough,” 380.

73 Hastings, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.—(Concluded.),” 379–81.

74 KBOH 1898–99, 23–24.

75 Ibid., 23–24, 34–35.

76 Bell County v. Blair, filed May 11, 1899, in KBOH 1898–99, 179–80.

77 Matheny, Magic City, 229. KBOH 1900–01, 18.

78 Surgeon General Walter Wyman, “Principles Governing the Extension of Aid to Local Authorities in the Matter of Smallpox,” in USSGPHMHS 1898, 630. The cash figure is from an untitled item in the MWR, Apr. 14, 1898, 6.

79 Wyman, “Principles,” 630.

THREE: WHEREVER WERTENBAKER WENT

1 Photographs of Wertenbaker in the uniforms of the Warrenton Rifles and the Marine-Hospital Service, as well as various medals for his service in the Virginia Volunteers (state militia), survive in PCPW. C. P. Wertenbaker note, “In the event of my death . . . ,” Dec. 27, 1915, ibid. See U.S. Marine-Hospital Service, Regulations Concerning Uniforms (Washington, 1891).

2 Wertenbaker describes his smallpox inspection suit in “Plan of Organization for the Suppression of Smallpox,” draft, CPWL, vol. 6.

3 On the geographical mobility of southern laborers, particularly in the rural nonagricultural sector, see Jacqueline Jones, The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present (New York, 1992), 127–66.

4 James A. Tobey, Public Health Law, 1. On the Service, see Laurence F. Schmeckebier, The Public Health Service: Its History, Activities, and Organization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1923); Robert Straus, Medical Care for Seamen: The Origin of Public Medical Services in the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). Ralph Chester Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798–1950 (Washington: Whittet E. Shepperson, 1951). See also John Duffy, The Sanitarians, 157–74, 239–55; Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace” (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

5 In addition to running its 22 hospitals and 107 relief stations for the nation’s merchant marine, manning immigrant inspection stations, and advising southern communities as they fought smallpox, the Service