Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1901 — Every Town to Have Smallpox ? [ARTICLE]

Every Town to Have Smallpox ?

Dr. J. N. Hurty writes the Miohigan City health authorities sounding the following alarm: “We are sorry to learn that smallpox has appeared in Michigan City. We expect, however, that this disease will devolope in every town in the state sooner or later. The infection is wide spread and is bound to find its way into every nook and corner of the state. There is only one way to stop its progress, and that is by general vaccination.” Dr, Hurty is a constitutional alarmist and his everlasting croaking of danger at one time and another, has scared all the kids of Indiana out of fully a year’s growth, not to speak of its effeot on older people. If this contagion which he writes about is really small-pox, which a great many able doctors very much doubt, it is a form of it that causes less deaths than an epidemic of measles, and is much easier to control and stamp out. We had 20 or 25 cases in Jasper county', and the only death that resulted was that of a three or four months’ old infant, that was reported to be very puny and delicate, to start with, and probably would not have survived long in any case. The disease did not “spread into every nook and corner here,” and was in fact easily controled, even when some of the infected parties flagrantly violated their quarantine. And even when, from this eame source, the contagion reached into a populous town like Kentland, it was very easily wiped out. As we have had occasion to remark before, Hurty sometimes hollers before he is Hurted.