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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Eves, and welcome to this Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that uncovers history one day at a time.

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Speaker 1: Today is January. The day was January twenty two. It

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Speaker 1: was frigid and Nome, a tiny town of about four

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Speaker 1: hundred people on the west coast of Alaska, right up

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Speaker 1: against the Baring Sea. Long winters, blizzards, and below freezing

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Speaker 1: temperatures or the norm and Nome so the icy town

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Speaker 1: was often hard to get to. That was to be expected,

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Speaker 1: But on this day, when the town was in desperate

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Speaker 1: need of a theorem to stop a diphtheria epidemic, that

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Speaker 1: inaccessibility posed a huge problem. An epidemic of diphtheria is

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Speaker 1: almost inevitable here stop. I am an urgent need of

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Speaker 1: one million units of diphtheria antitoxin. Stop. That's how Dr

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Speaker 1: Curtis Welsh, Norm's only doctor, started his telegram to towns

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Speaker 1: all over Alaska and the US Public Health Service. People

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Speaker 1: were dying and it was clear that the outbreak was

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Speaker 1: a crisis that needed immediate attention. See Diphtheria is a

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Speaker 1: potentially deadly bacterial infection, especially in children. It spreads easily,

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Speaker 1: causing fever, chills, and a thick coating on the throat

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Speaker 1: and tonsils that makes it really hard to breathe. And

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties there was a vaccine for diphtheria,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't widely used yet, and when the first

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Speaker 1: person with symptoms of diptheria went to Dr Wells for

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Speaker 1: help in December nineteen, Welsh misdiagnosed the condition is tonsilitis

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Speaker 1: because no one else was showing signs of the illness.

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Speaker 1: That innuit boy died the next day, and until January,

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Speaker 1: Welsh would misdiagnose more people, and more people would die.

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Speaker 1: Emily Morgan, one of four nurses at Maynard Columbus Hospital

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Speaker 1: and NOME, once had diftheria and soon recognized the symptoms.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't until January when Dr Welsh would correctly diagnosed

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Speaker 1: dif theoria in three year old Billy Barnett. Dif theoria

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Speaker 1: is definitely not the diagnosis you want to hear, but

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Speaker 1: now that he knew the real issue, he could move

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Speaker 1: on to treating it properly, and there was an antioxin

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Speaker 1: available that could cure dif theoria, but there were a

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Speaker 1: few problems. Maynard Columbus Hospital had eight thousand units of

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Speaker 1: the diftheria antitoxin on hand, but they were expired and

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Speaker 1: the doctor didn't want to risk making Little Billy even sicker,

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Speaker 1: and per Murphy's Law, Dr Wales had ordered to supply

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Speaker 1: of the antitoxin in the summer of nineteen four, to

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Speaker 1: be sent in from Juno, Alaska, but the shipment didn't

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Speaker 1: make it to know before the ports froze, so when

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Speaker 1: another child was diagnosed with the illness on January one,

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Speaker 1: he gave her six thousand units of the anti toxin.

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Speaker 1: It didn't work. She died that day. With the number

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Speaker 1: of diphtheria cases and deaths quickly growing, Dr Wells reached

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Speaker 1: out to the mayor to call an emergency town council meeting,

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Speaker 1: and on the evening before he sent his urgent telegram,

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Speaker 1: Dr Wills declared to the council that he would need

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Speaker 1: at least one million units to curb the epidemic. The

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Speaker 1: council called for a quarantine and put Emily Morgan in

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Speaker 1: charge of it, but they still needed the anti toxin,

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Speaker 1: so the next day Dr Wells shipped the telegram to

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Speaker 1: let all major towns in Alaska know about the epidemic

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Speaker 1: and to Washington, d C. To ask for assistance. Over

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Speaker 1: a million units of the anti toxin were available at

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Speaker 1: hospitals across the west coast of the US, but it

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Speaker 1: would take them a while to get to Seattle, Washington,

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Speaker 1: where they would then have to be sent to Alaska. Fortunately,

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Speaker 1: a hospital and anchorage had three hundred thousand units of

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Speaker 1: the anti toxin, but it was still over a thousand

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Speaker 1: miles away. Daylight hours were short, waterways were frozen, planes

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Speaker 1: which had open cockpits and water cool engines were just unreliable,

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Speaker 1: and the closest train station was in Ninana, Alaska, about

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Speaker 1: seven hundred miles or over a thousand kilometers away. So

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Speaker 1: how would the cure get from Ninana to Nome Dog slit,

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Speaker 1: of course. At a January Board of Health meaning Superintendent

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Speaker 1: Mark Summers proposed a dog slate relay. One team would

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Speaker 1: leave from Ninana without anti toxin and the other team

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Speaker 1: would leave from Nome. The two teams would meet in

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Speaker 1: New Lative and the Nome team would hit back with

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Speaker 1: the anti toxin. So on January, as Dr Welsh and

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Speaker 1: the nurses back at the hospital care for an increasing

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Speaker 1: number of sick people and waited on the larger shipment

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Speaker 1: from Seattle. The dog sled journey began. Driver William Shannon

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Speaker 1: picked up the twenty pound package of anti toxin at

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Speaker 1: the train station and took off with his team of

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Speaker 1: nine malamute. The next several days would be a saga

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Speaker 1: made for Hollywood, a story complete with high stakes drama,

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Speaker 1: ticking cloth, and adorable heroic dogs. There were many cases

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Speaker 1: of hypothermia and frost bite, a pesty reindeer, a flip

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Speaker 1: sled and lost package, dogs that died of exposure, and

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Speaker 1: wind teels down to minus eighty five degrees fahrenheit. In

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Speaker 1: one of the tales most dramatic moments, famed musher Leonard

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Speaker 1: Steppelo jobs as dogs led by the Siberian husky Togo

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Speaker 1: on a dangerous shortcut across the Northern Sound, and of

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Speaker 1: course US News outlet were soaking it all up every

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Speaker 1: step of the way. On February one, Gunner Cosin began

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Speaker 1: what would turn out to be the last leg of

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Speaker 1: the relay. He headed out in near blizzard conditions with

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Speaker 1: now legendary Siberian husky Balto as the lead dog, and

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Speaker 1: on the morning of February second, five and a half

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Speaker 1: days after the relay started, Cosson arrived at Front Street,

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Speaker 1: Gnome with the life daving serum. Nurses went around the

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Speaker 1: town and outlying villages, giving people the anti toxin and

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Speaker 1: comforting affected families. Nurse Emily Morgan even helped to father

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Speaker 1: build a coffin for his son. Thanks to the assistance

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Speaker 1: of hundreds of dogs and dozens of people, the quarantine

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Speaker 1: was lifted three weeks later. The legacy of the relay

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Speaker 1: lives on in the Iditarod Trail, sled dog race and

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Speaker 1: um all the shining tributes to Balto. I'm Eaves, jeffco

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Speaker 1: and hopefully you know a little more about history today

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Speaker 1: than you did yesterday. You can subscribe to This Day

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Speaker 1: in History Class on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to Chandler Mays,

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Speaker 1: our producer. We'll see you here in the same place

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Speaker 1: tomorrow