184 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



and the disease was conimunicated to Spring City, Chester county, 

 and to Royersford, Montgomery county. By the energetic action of 

 the Medical Inspector of the State Board of Health for Chester 

 county, Dr. J. G. Shoemaker, in whose recent death the State and the 

 Board have sustained a most serious loss, the disease was effectually 

 stamped out. But the circumstance was sufticif^t to indicate to the 

 State Board that similar cases must constantly occur with the re- 

 turn of large bodies of troops from the West Indies where this dis- 

 ease always prevailed under Spanish rule, without the slightest at- 

 tempt at restriction, and steps were at once taken to inform all boards 

 of health that it was their duty to prepare for the inevitable epi- 

 demic. With the exception of the large cities of the State, with well 

 organized and experienced boards, this warning was "as the idle 

 winds which they regarded not." A few school boards organized 

 as boards of health, and they have since had reason to congratulate 

 themselves on their wisdom. But as a rule, throughout the rural dis- 

 tricts nothing was done. The prophesied epidemic, starting natur- 

 ally in Florida where the great majority of the troops were disem- 

 barked, travelled steadily up along the coast, entering this State from 

 lumber camps in Virginia and Maryland. In one of the counties of 

 the southern tier it prevailed throughout the mountainous, sparsely 

 settled, districts for manj' months unrestricted, and in fact rarely 

 recognized, until it reached the most important borough in the 

 county, where, as there was a board of health, its true character 

 was determined and the State Board was notified. From this start- 

 ing point, in the rural districts it spread all over the State, pre- 

 vailing principally in farm houses, mining villages and lumber camps. 

 By the wisdom of the State Legislature, a fund of .^.50,000 had been 

 created several years before, on which the State Board of Health, 

 with permission of the Governor, the State Treasurer, and the Au- 

 ditor General, could draw in cases of emergency, and by the judicious 

 use of a small portion of this fund, the State Board was able to es- 

 tablish quarantines and furnish vaccination in the rural districts 

 with great promptness, so that at the end of twenty months, although 

 3,194 cases had occurred, and twenty-nine counties had been in- 

 vaded, w ith 178 centres of infection, it was able to declare that the 

 disease was entirely stamped out. 



Three months later, however, two children from Colorado, where 

 small-pox was then extensively prevailing, came to a borough near 

 The Capital of the State bringing the infection with them. The dis- 

 ease quickly spread to Harrisburg and to neighboring hamlets and 

 villages, and eventually over the entire State. It was also subse- 

 quently brought in from other States. Owing to unfortunate dissen- 

 sions in the last Legislature, the emergency fund appears to have 

 been overlooked, so that the State Board is now entirely without 



