Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.02.2019, Page 10

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10 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • February 15 2019
Has anyone in your family died of smallpox?
Nobody in my generation, in my
father’s generation, in my grandfather’s
generation – but in my great-grandparent’s
generation, a baby died of smallpox. My great-
grandmother was just a young girl but she
survived. Her parents survived. It could be that
they’d caught the cowpox in Iceland or it could
be that they were vaccinated in Iceland. I wish
I’d known enough to ask my great-grandmother
about the smallpox years. Maybe it would have
been too painful for her to recount. A hundred
and two people in New Iceland died.
If you read Walter J. Lindal’s book, The
Icelanders in Canada, or Will Kristjanson’s
book, The Icelandic People in Manitoba, or
Dr. S.O. Thompson’s book, Riverton and the
Icelandic Settlement, you will read about the
smallpox epidemic. But what you mostly read
are straightforward statements, facts – when the
smallpox started, when it ended, the harshness
of the quarantine and the dreadful effect it had
on the colony. What I’ve never heard is anyone
talk about how our people died. It’s as if it is so
painful that it has to be pushed under the bed like
dirty laundry when an unexpected visitor arrives.
According to the history of smallpox, the
disease killed 400,000 Europeans each year.
Smallpox was responsible for thirty percent of
blindness. I didn’t know that. Three of every ten
people who were blind were sightless because
of smallpox. Eighty percent of children who
got smallpox died, so of your child came down
with smallpox, there was an eight in ten chance
he or she would die. Wikipedia reports that,
“Smallpox was the leading cause of death in the
18th century.”
According to The New Scientist, in “1707
to 1709, smallpox killed 26 percent of Iceland’s
population.” But help was coming. The English
physician Edward Jenner realized that milkmaids
who got the cowpox did not get smallpox and
discovered that cowpox could be used to
inoculate people against smallpox. That was in
1796. That was 80 years before the second set
of settlers came to New Iceland in 1876. That
smallpox ravaged the settlers in New Iceland was
crazy, criminal, absurd, and totally unnecessary.
Every one of them should have been inoculated
while they were in Iceland.
According to Dr. John Heagerty, writing
in the aftermath of a 1924 smallpox outbreak
in Windsor, Ontario, “Smallpox in those days
meant death. Relentless and insatiate the disease
would sweep through a community mowing
down all those who had not already suffered
from it, killing, maiming and leaving its victims
blinded or disfigured for life.”
Sir George Mackenzie says about his trip
to Iceland in 1810 – this was 66 years before
the Icelanders came to New Iceland – “A few
years ago, the vaccine matter was introduced
into the island from Denmark; but owing to the
smallness of the population, and its dispersion
over so wide a surface, this was soon lost again;
and at the time of our arrival, we found the
practice of inoculation entirely suspended. In
the contemplation of this circumstance, we had
taken out with us a few vaccine crusts, with
the design of recommending the method lately
proposed by Mr. Bryce. Almost immediately
on our arrival, we inoculated several children
at Reikiavik, and afterwards in other parts of
the country; and having a communication with
the Landphysicus on the subject, we had the
satisfaction of knowing, before we returned
to Britain, that the vaccine crust had found its
way into every part of the island. The adoption
of the plan of inoculating from the crust will
doubtless secure to the inhabitants a permanent
continuance of this blessing.”
When your ancestors and mine got smallpox,
they got high fever, chills, headache, severe
back pain, abdominal pain, and began vomiting.
The symptoms would have gone away in two to
three days. Then a rash would appear and spread.
This is when a person is highly contagious.
Two days after appearance of the rash, the rash
would develop into abscesses that filled with
fluid and puss. They would break open and scab
over. Leaving pitted scars. Smallpox sometimes
left people so disfigured that they wanted no
one to see them. This is what happened to John
Ramsey’s daughter, Mary.
The Icelanders were packed into their hastily
built houses. There was no way to escape the
coughing, sneezing, contaminated clothing or
bedding. That is the way that it spread. Those
that caught the disease had sores and blisters in
the mouth that spread the virus into the throat.
Blindness came from blisters that appeared near
the eyes.
Vaccination was used in Great Britain and
its North American colonies. That benefited the
wealthier classes in the late 1700s. But there was
no real reduction in the disease until vaccination
was widely available. Even so, there was an
epidemic in Montreal in 1885. There was another
in Windsor in 1924.
It wasn’t just the Icelandic authorities who
were neglectful of vaccinating their citizens,
particularly their poor ones, the kind who would
emigrate to Amerika. That epidemic in Montreal
was nine years after the one in New Iceland and
the one in Windsor forty-eight years after.
When there was an effective prevention
for a dreadful disease and death, why was it
not rigorously used? There was, of course, the
problem of communication: no radio, TV, or
internet; newspapers were often local or non-
existent; doctors and nurses were as much home
taught as schooled and once they moved away
from a central location, they, too, were isolated.
Cleanliness was not understood as a way of
preventing disease and the means of cleanliness
was not easily available. We take waterworks,
baths, showers, basins, and flush toilets for
granted but my parents didn’t get waterworks
until I was twenty-one. A lot of people had very
little education. Medicine was often ineffective
and local responses were often just superstition.
Living conditions for many were primitive.
Travel was slow and precarious.
Why weren’t people vaccinated at the
immigration sheds? Why weren’t they vaccinated
before they got on ships to take them to North
America? Not just in Iceland but in England,
Scotland, Norway, Germany?
I grew up with the stories of that smallpox
winter. My mind filled with images of the dead
being lain out on the roofs of the houses where
the sick and dying lay. Entire families dying;
individuals in great pain – in crude log huts with
nothing to be done because nothing could be
done. I wish we’d had among us a Blackwood
to etch pictures of that year, to remind us not
just of the tragedy but also of what has been
accomplished. No one dies of smallpox now. No
one goes blind because of smallpox now. Hopes
and prayers didn’t make that happen; science
and medical knowledge made that happen.
Knowledge made that happen; education made
that happen; vaccination made that happen.
SMALLPOX
the unnecessary epidemic
W.D. Valgardson
Victoria, BC
PAINTING BY E.J.C. HAMMAN; ENGRAVING BY C. MANIGAUD
Edward Jenner vaccinating his young child, held by
Catherine Jenner, while a maid rolls up her sleeve and
a man stands outside holding a cow.
PHOTO: ERIK LYNGSØE / PIXABAY
Sculpture of a milkmaid. An apocryphal tales says that
Edward Jenner was inspired to experiment with vaccination
when he noticed that a milkmaid subjected to cowpox
seemed immune to smallpox.