By Ross Eric Gibson
We are living in the Age of Ignorance, lacking sufficient knowledge to confidently emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. At the moment, everything is an experiment, as financial needs, cabin fever, beautiful weather, and even foolhardiness, combine to test the limits of our confinement. PBS News noted that we are experiencing an “Infodemic” of misinformation, disinformation, and hoaxes. What we need most is dependable information from reliable COVID-19 testing, to a vaccine. But will the pro-vaccine coalition that includes anti-maskers greet the eventual vaccine with anti-vaxxers? Santa Cruz was one of the first to test the legal limits of vaccines in the U.S.
The 1886 epidemic
David King Abeel came to Santa Cruz from Missouri in 1886. He’d made his fortune as editor and publisher of the Kansas City Journal, and fell in love with Santa Cruz. In 1887 he built his Eastlake mansion on the Mission Terrace bluff, overlooking downtown Santa Cruz (site of today’s apartments at 110-112 Pine Place). Then he bought the waterfront’s main hotel, the Douglas House, and began expanding it with a $100,000 Queen Anne-style wing.
During construction, San Francisco papers reported an illness in Los Angeles in February. At first it had all the symptoms of the flu, which cleared up in three days. Then came a rash of bumps, starting on the face, then hands, arms, and body. It was smallpox, an illness which had routinely killed 400,000 Europeans every year. It was highly contagious until the rash cleared up in three-to-four weeks, and if it didn’t kill you, it often left one scarred, or even blind. It required quarantine, vaccination of anyone exposed, and burning of clothes and sheets that touched the victim.
By June 1887 it caused 15 deaths out of 120 cases in Los Angeles. The city was in the midst of a building boom, and didn’t like the San Francisco papers reporting L.A. was “overrun with the plague.” Los Angeles tried to underplay it, which upset the State Board of Health, criticizing their “extreme secrecy” and lack of urgency in the matter. Soon smallpox had spread statewide, as did the fear.
In May, 1888, as the outbreak was slowing down, Abeel opened his castle-like Sea Beach Hotel to great acclaim, as one of the leading first-class seaside hotels. The smallpox epidemic had drawn to a close by June 30, 1888, causing 94 deaths statewide. But the trauma of parents fearing for their children’s lives led state legislators to pass the Vaccination Act of 1889, requiring all school children to be vaccinated.
Abeel refused, and as a result, his 12-year-old eldest son James was not allowed to attend school. Abeel felt this violated his constitutional and parental rights. So he hauled the principal of Santa Cruz public schools, D.C. Clark, before the Santa Cruz Superior Court to force his son’s admission. The school district was represented by County district attorney Wm. T. Jeter, a man of towering ability (who in 1895 would become Lt. Governor of California). Judge Ferdinand J. McCann found in favor of the school. Fearing local bias, Abeel then took the case to the California Supreme Court.
Remembering the 1868 epidemic
The issue was debated among Santa Cruzans, some of whom remembered a far deadlier epidemic. Across Front Street from the Octagon Building was the home-office of Dr. C.L. Anderson. He was the former Surgeon-General of Nevada, who came to Santa Cruz in 1867 to serve as County Health Officer, only to find himself in the middle of the 1868 smallpox outbreak. Anderson had immunity due to vaccination, and answered calls countywide on horseback, as most roads were impassable by buggy. He quarantined every victim in their home, and traced their contacts. He managed to cap the outbreak, spending some $5,000 from the Indigent Sick Fund.
Then San Juan Bautista was stricken. By Nov. 14, their postmaster John Whitney reported 122 cases and 25 deaths, with entire families infected, large extended Spanish ranch families of sometimes a dozen members, and those not infected were exhausted in the caring. Business came to a standstill, while those who could, fled the area. The stage coach ceased running between San Juan Bautista and Watsonville. In response to pleas for help, Salinas and Santa Cruz took up collections for their assistance.
Unfortunately, those fleeing San Juan Bautista had spread the contagion to Watsonville with more than 20 cases, so the stage coach between Watsonville and Santa Cruz was discontinued as well. Meanwhile, the County Board of Supervisors appointed Dr. Anderson head of a County Board of Health, composed of hotelier Amasa Pray, deputy sheriff Albert Jones, and Cooper Street merchant Wm. B. Cooper.
But the epidemic was also political. The mild-mannered Dr. Anderson was growing alarmed seeing the outbreak downplayed by business interests, while finding people mistakenly believing they were safe when they weren’t. Too often they thought disinfectants were sufficient protection, had received fake vaccines or expired vaccines, giving a false sense of security. Lacking the tell-tail signs of immunity, Anderson would have to revaccinate them.
Yet Dec. 5, reports came out that the disease was abating in Watsonville with nine old cases, and only two to three in Santa Cruz, therefore the schools would reopen after the holidays. In the same Sentinel issue, Anderson wrote, “It would be criminal now for persons to deceive themselves as to the extent to which the smallpox is raging in [Santa Cruz] city. It has permeated the entire community. It is almost in every street, and it has been now broadcast over the entire coast. If we were clear of it to-day, it would be likely to come back [due to our continued susceptibility].” He wanted people to know if they were vaccinated up to three days following exposure, they could still avoid the illness. And they had up to a week to find anyone they may have exposed, to vaccinate them, too.
Early American cures
Unfortunately, ignorance spread as fast as the virus, as some claimed vaccination was as deadly as the disease. But they were citing the early days of the vaccine. In 1721, Boston was in the midst of a smallpox epidemic. To the rescue came the infamous Cotton Mather, who 30 years earlier had gotten people to believe Salem had real witches, who must be killed. Mather now proposed what sounded like witchcraft: making “cat-scratch” wounds on the arm or leg, and infecting them with pox pustules or scabs to make one immune. It didn’t help when Mather said the idea came from his negro slave Onesimus, “who is a pretty intelligent fellow.” People thought it suspicious that Mather had only convinced one doctor to do the process. Mather was denounced as a “child killer,” with bricks thrown through his window, and even an assassination attempt.
Mather said this “variolation” was common among Africans, “and whoever had ye courage to use it, was forever free from ye fear of the contagion.” It soon was agreed that slaves with a variolation scar were always worth more, for having developed this immunity. As 6,000 Bostonians became infected by smallpox, 600 of the non-infected agreed to immunization. Of the infected, 1,000 died (14%), while among the inoculated, only 12 died (2%). This was the first instance of inoculation known on the continent. That same year the first English experiments were done, based on Lady Mary Montagu’s observations of inoculations in Turkey. George Washington made inoculations a requirement for all soldiers in the Continental Army.
At the time, milk maids were a standard of unspoiled beauty, and Scotsman Dr. Edward Jenner noted it was because they never seemed to have pockmarked faces. He realized that having milked the cows every morning, milk maids had gotten a mild case of cow pox, making them immune to the smallpox virus. So in 1798 Jenner created the “vaccine,” named for “variolae vaccinae” (Latin for “small pox of the cow”), using the milder cow pox to cure the deadly smallpox. In America, the vaccine became widespread, and variolation with unpredictable smallpox scabs was outlawed.
Verdict
On May 31, 1890, in a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court sided with Santa Cruz schools to protect their students through vaccination. Since then, subsequent national court decisions have backed this up. There is no Constitutional right to endanger others. Nor are the unvaccinated a protected class. Public safety is always an overriding concern. And those avoiding “side effects” should consider the side effects of no vaccine are smallpox, possible death, and infecting your friends and loved ones. Through diligent vaccination efforts over many years, the smallpox scourge dating back to ancient Egypt was completely eradicated worldwide in 1980.
Ross Eric Gibson is a former history columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and Santa Cruz Sentinel.
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