It was only in the previous February that the first airmail flight in Alaska took place. His telegram is pictured below.įlying was relatively new at the time and winter flight was still largely untested. Public Health Service in Washington, D.C., pleading for help. Desperate, he sent radiotelegrams to the other major towns in Alaska and one to the U.S. Welch had ordered more diphtheria antitoxin from the health commissioner in Juneau, but the port closed for the winter before the shipment arrived. The next day a seven-year-old girl was diagnosed and Welch tried to give her expired antitoxin (all that was on hand) in hopes that it would work, but she died several hours later. After four children took ill and died, the town's only doctor, Curtis Welch, eventually diagnosed diphtheria in three-year-old Billy Barnett, who died just two weeks after the onset of symptoms. In the winter of 1924-1925, a diphtheria epidemic was threatening the town of Nome, located on the southern Seward Peninsula on the northwestern coast of Alaska. Was the diphtheria threat to Nome really as bad as it's portrayed in the movie? Photo: Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Library and Archives Champion dog musher Leonhard Seppala (left) circa 1925 and actor Willem Dafoe (right) as Seppala in the Disney Togo movie.
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