The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [19]
Mitchell called his meeting to order. He was a quiet man, a listener who rarely spoke unless he had something important to add to the argument. He had already appeared before the local council in June to formally request additional money for sanitation and quarantine as the epidemic season approached. His request was denied. A staunch believer in annual quarantine during the summer months, Mitchell then appealed to his own board for quarantine. The majority voted yes; but the two other physicians on the board voted no.
Dr. John H. Erskine listened to Mitchell’s pleas. Erskine was a commanding presence, standing at an unusual six feet tall. His close-set, pale eyes and fair skin glowed against black-blue waves of hair and a long, dark goatee. Erskine’s height coupled with his striking appearance gave him an air of leadership; he was used to people not only taking notice of him but listening to him. A highly educated and ambitious surgeon, he excelled during the war and later as the health officer of the Memphis Board of Health during the 1873 yellow fever epidemic. During that epidemic, Erskine had even noticed an unusual occurrence: The prison where he often worked reported only two cases of the fever. The fifteen-foot-high prison wall, Erskine noticed, had somehow barred the fever from entering.
Still, as Erskine listened to Mitchell’s pertinacious pleas, he did not believe the rumors from New Orleans warranted such drastic measures. Quarantine, after all, would create panic, stifling river traffic and delaying cotton shipments. It was not even a proven method of protection against the scourge. Erskine spear-headed a petition, signed by several prominent physicians and published in the newspaper, overturning the vote for quarantine.
It brought the battle to the public. Angry letters to the Memphis Appeal asked, “Is it not better to expend a few thousand as a safeguard than to lose millions by the disastrous effects of yellow fever, besides the thousands of valued lives that will have passed away?” The paper followed with an editorial: “Should an epidemic reach Memphis this year those who opposed the establishment of a quarantine will be held responsible.”
It is impossible to know what went through Mitchell’s mind at that moment, frustrated by his own board and fed up with city officials. On July 11, Mitchell resigned from the Board of Health, and in spite of a 400-person petition in support of him, Mitchell would not change his mind. To replace him, the mayor instated Dr. Dudley Saunders, who saw no need to quarantine the city and choke river traffic.
The Memphis Appeal published a letter from Mitchell in which he explained his resignation to the people of Memphis: “I may add that at present I see no cause of danger from yellow fever; but we saw none in 1873 . . . It is my earnest and honest conviction that should we ever have yellow fever again, it will be our own fault in not taking the known necessary precautions against it.”
In the coming weeks, both Mitchell and Erskine would think back to their initial actions and that fateful vote—one would survive and one would perish in the consuming epidemic. The “war of the doctors” had been a futile skirmish, waged too late to be effective. Unknown to any of them, the fever had already taken its first victim in Memphis.
The Appeal also published an editorial in favor of Saunders: “The public will hail his appointment with satisfaction and feel