Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1903 — THE SMALL-POX SITUATION. [ARTICLE]

THE SMALL-POX SITUATION.

There are a few cases of varioloid, or small-pox in a mild form in Rensselaer, but there is no occasion for any great alarm. All the cases have been quarantined and the necessary steps taken to its spread. Dr. Hurty of Indianapolis, secretary of the state board of health, was here Thursday and inspected some of the cases. He pronounced it small-pox in a mild form, and in a talk given at the court house at 1 p. m., said that the proper thing to do was to require everyone to be vaccinated; that vaccination was a sure and only preventive, and so long as we had unvaccinated people in our city or community there wonld be small-pox. He said that it was foolish for the farmers to stay away from town on aocount of small-pox, for if they were unvaccinated and kept out of town to avoid the disease, it would go to them. He also told the county health officer that it was unnecessary to close the schools or churches, we are informed. Dr. Hnrty’s whole talk was practically “get vaccinated,” and regarding length of time it took vaccination to run out he said it varied, but would advise everyone to be vaccinated who had not been in the past three or five years. If the vaccine takes it is evidence that the old vaccination had run out; if it failed to take, the person was immune by reason of the old vaccination. Those who were vaccinated need have no fears whatever, and even after having been exposed immediate vaccination would head it off invaraibly, because it took two weeks for small-pox to “take” after exposure, while vaccine “takes” in from three to five days. It was Saturday morning that the doctors got together and diagnozed the cases which had been prevalent here for two weeks or more as small-pox. So mild was the disease that some afflicted with it had never stopped work. It was thought, however, best to take immediate action to prevent its spread and to stamp it out entirely, and public meetings church services, etc., were ordered not to be held for the present. The disease seems to have been brought here by a telephone lineman employed by the Jasper County Telephone Co., and the telephone girls were all taken down with it, Miss Lora Rhodes having the most severe case, and even she has not been very sick only about two days. Owing to the mildness of the disease a great many people were exposed before it was known what it was. Among the cases now known to be in this county and quarantined (some perhaps, there being a little doubt regarding) are: Mrs. Barney Day Witt and a Marion boy at Fair Oaks; Mr. and Mrs. John Richards, Pleasant Ridge; Mrs. Jakie Hopkins, Miss Goldie Harmon, I. A Glazebrook and daughter Miss Ara, Miss Lora Rhoades, Miss May Fox, W. J. White of Kankakee tp., at the home of Bert Brooks, in the north east part of town, a son of E. E. Preble, Sol Fendig, John Macklenburg and family, Arnold Richards, Temple Hammerton, Mrs. Hartman and Frank Richards, are the home of Fred Hartman, Charlie Fox and Austin Haas (quartered in a tent at the baseball ground) at Rensselaer. White was here on the jury in circuit court last week. His case is among the most severe; but none of them are anythin*? like “the small-pox W 6 used to nave,’* in severity, and the disease prevalent here is not as much to be dreaded as the measles, and a hundred times more than scarlet fever or diptheria. The Democrat’s advice to its country readers is to come to town and do your trading as usual. If not vaccinated, get it done and see that your family is vaccinated. It will do no harm and migut do soine good, in the event that the disease should assume a malignant form.