In last week’s article, we touched on tuberculosis related to the San Haven facility. This was once a major disease in children in this state. There’s been a significant decline in disease and death in the last century, but it ran rampant before 1900.
It was actually a significant public health issue for adults and children. It was most prevalent in urban centers. Although we hardly had urban centers before 1900, Fargo and Bismarck, even then, were the two largest cities.
Regardless, you can go to just about any pre-1900 cemetery and find children who died of TB.
Typhoid fever, measles and diphtheria were also significant heath threats. These were the leading causes of death in children in the early days of statehood. Smallpox is also listed, but it was largely contained by the time Dakota Territory was established in 1861 and was eradicated worldwide by 1980.
Diphtheria, however, a serious bacterial infection, decimated entire families pre 1900. In fact, a report in the Bismarck Tribune in 1898 outlined a “peculiar” disease in July of that year that claimed the lives of nearly 50 children in Emmons County.
According to the Emmons County Health Board, in one neighborhood, a visiting doctor found there had been 18 deaths in children, all among Germans from Russia settlers. Other Russian settlements in Emmons and McIntosh counties claimed as many as 50 childhood fatalities.
The Tribune reported this peculiar disease, that is something like diphtheria, was believed to have been imported from Russia.
That disease was indeed diphtheria and took the lives of 99 people in southern Emmons County in 1898. One couple lost eight children in less than a month. It became so dire that many of the children were buried at night to avoid spreading the disease at a funeral.
A diphtheria outbreak also occurred in Winona in 1891, but authorities quickly took action to quarantine the town and shut off the ferry to Fort Yates in order to mitigate the risk.
Diphtheria is defined as bacteria that produce a deadly toxin in the nose, mouth and throat, forming a membrane from dead tissue that can suffocate a person.
Diphtheria is now well controlled in the United States because of widespread vaccination, but it’s not eradicated. The last confirmed case in the U.S., was in 1997.
Typhoid fever, although considered a low-risk issue today, was once a serious health concern like diphtheria. It was prevalent in the 1880s and early 1900s and was often linked to contaminated water and sources of poor sanitation.
In 1894, 40 percent of the Grand Forks population became sick from typhoid with 194 fatalities attributed to it. An epidemic occurred in Chamberlain, S.D., in the winter of 1932-33 that was likely due to insufficient chlorination of Missouri River water.
Although specific numbers aren’t listed for how many children perished because of typhoid fever, children were more susceptible to the disease than adults.
Today there’s been a flare up of measles, and although it is slowly spreading among unvaccinated children in the state, it isn’t near the problem it once was.
As of this writing, 25 cases have been reported in Williams, Cass and Grand Forks counties. North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services reports the state has experienced a decline in vaccination rates with 81 percent of children 19-35 months and 90 percent of kindergartners up to date with measles vaccinations.
HHS is monitoring the outbreak and is advising anyone who may have been exposed to measles to quarantine immediately.
A disease not listed that didn’t kill, but could severely paralyze was polio. An outbreak in 1946 was the beginning of the worst outbreak in North Dakota, especially among children under 10 years old. By 1952, 21,000 cases were reported and by 2000, the oral vaccine in a sugar cube was discontinued.
