Small Pox in Oklahoma - Each outbreak was met with a quarantine and detention plan that had been perfected in 1900.

In 1899-1900, smallpox swept across the Indian territory with such a vengeance that extreme measures were taken to prevent its further spread.

The first cases were reported in coal mines, so workers in the mining camps were prevented from leaving.

Families built fever sheds to isolate the sick. Communities created pest houses.

Cities were quarantined and, finally, dozens of detention camps were set up across the state where patients were detained and cared for until they were no longer contagious - or died. Death usually occurred the second week.

Small pox was a virulent, contagious disease with a history of scarring and killing people. In its worst form it caused fever, vomiting, horrible scars, blindness and a death rate of up to 30 percent.

It was spread by close contact with a person who was in the early stages of the disease. Most susceptible were babies and young children.

The only way to truly manage smallpox was to prevent it. A massive vaccination campaign was launched and thousands complied. The Choctaws vaccinated 8,000 and other tribes followed their example.

Since smallpox could be spread by contaminated objects, houses and business were fumigated. Bedding and linens were burned. Homes were thoroughly cleaned.

At one time, panic was so great that many of the pets of those with the disease were killed.

In January 1900, the superintendent of health ordered the mail from the cities of Newkirk and Blackwell “disinfected at once”.

Naturally, one of the consequences of quarantining a town was the loss of revenue.

Caddo businessmen normally served customers from all over the territory, but during the quarantines travel was limited.

Also, many previously scheduled events had to be canceled or moved to safer locations.

Territory town mayors spoke out against visitors from other communities and officers were placed at the entrances to turn them away.

As life slowly returned to normal, the camps were dismantled, but smallpox continued to be a problem for many more years.

The local newspapers reported new cases in 1905-06, and another epidemic in 1912-13. Each outbreak was met with a quarantine and detention plan that had been perfected in 1900.

Note: The Bryan County Genealogy Library has many camp records on microfilm.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200408/detention-camps-used-to-treat-smallpox-patients

>>11252867

500 years ago, another epidemic swept Mexico: smallpox

September 28, 2020 at 10:45 a.m. EDT

MEXICO CITY — There were mass cremations of bodies; entire families died and the inhabitants of the city, afraid to pull their bodies out, simply collapsed their homes on top of them to bury them on the spot.

The scene, beyond even the current coronavirus pandemic, was a scourge brought 500 years ago by Spanish conquistadores and their servants that exploded in Mexico City in September 1520.

Smallpox and other newly introduced diseases went on to kill tens of millions of Indigenous people in the Americas who had no resistance to the European illnesses. The viruses later spread to South America, and helped lead to the downfall and overthrow of empires like the Aztecs and Incas. And its lessons remain largely forgotten today.

Hernán Cortés and his band of a few hundred Spaniards had been kicked out of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, today’s Mexico City, on June 30, 1520, by angry residents after the conquistadores took the emperor Moctezuma captive and he died.

But the Spaniards left behind Indigenous and African slaves they had brought with them from Cuba. Some of them were already infected with smallpox, and amid the harsh conditions in the capital — Cortés and his allies blockaded the city after the June defeat.

Historian Miguel León Portilla in his book “The Vision of the Conquered” cites chroniclers who described it as “a great plague … a huge destroyer of people.” Cuitláhuac, Moctezuma’s successor, died of the disease in 1520.

The Aztecs, or Mexicas as they were known, tried long-trusted remedies to combat the unknown disease. Like the coronavirus pandemic, that did not necessarily work out well.

They tried medicinal steam baths known as temezcales, a sort of sweat lodge, but because people were packed so tightly into the enclosed stone and mud chambers, the baths served only to propagate the disease more efficiently.

“It was a massive group contagion,” said medical historian Sandra Guevara,

Cortés and his men would reenter and conquer the disease-ravaged city a year later in August 1521.

By then, due to smallpox, battles and food shortages caused by the conquistadores’ blockade, there were so many rotting corpses in the street that Cortés briefly decided to move the Spaniards’ new capital to a town further south to avoid the pestilent smell.

Outside the Aztec capital, those Indigenous people who remained dealt with the first smallpox epidemic — and later plagues by that and other diseases wound up killing most of the pre-Hispanic population — by doing what they continued to do for centuries: retreat into hard-to-reach areas and try to block themselves off from the outside world.

During the coronavirus pandemic, many Indigenous communities retreated to the centuries-old ways, setting up roadblocks to prevent outsiders from entering their villages.

“We are living through today something like what they (our ancestors) might have felt,” Guevara said.

Apart from failed cures and almost medieval strategies, it remains unclear how much humanity has learned from one of the greatest mass die-offs due to epidemics.

In the case of smallpox, humanity won the battle: the disease gave rise to the first successful vaccine in 1796, and the World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated outside laboratories in 1980.

But such victories bred arrogance, experts say.

“In the last 50 years, a certain arrogance has prevailed in the medical community, thinking that we had brought all the infectious diseases under control,” said José Esparza, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology. “This pandemic has given us a big surprise.”

Humanity has learned lessons from diseases, Guevara notes. Cholera taught us the importance of clean water and sanitation; AIDS changed sexual behavior.

“The important thing is how we deal with it,” said Guevara. “We have to learn that humanity cannot control everything.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/500-years-ago-another-epidemic-swept-mexico-smallpox/2020/09/28/38e9c130-0199-11eb-b92e-029676f9ebec_story.html