Plagues and Rumors of Plagues
By Davis Bitton

Future historians will probably take note of the SARS scare of 2003. Still relatively confined in the late spring, "severe acute respiratory syndrome" has already had disastrous impact on tourism and the general economy in China, Hong Kong, and Toronto. Protective masks are worn by health care workers and many others. Quarantines are imposed. Naturally, the hope is that this disease will not spiral out of control but can be contained and then eradicated.

In 1817, a great cholera pandemic began in India and spread to many other parts of the world. In the 1830s, it imperiled many parts of the United States and, as we know, cruelly attacked some companies of Latter-day Saints as they crossed the plains in 1847 and after.

Another fearsome disease was smallpox. Imperfectly understood, not always properly diagnosed, it wrought havoc. Native Americans fell victim to smallpox far more than to any military weapons of the European invaders. Vaccination has effectively stifled smallpox during the twentieth century, but we are reminded that terrorists might still employ smallpox very effectively against a population where supplies of vaccine are low and no longer universally administered.

Vaccination was not enthusiastically accepted by everyone. Each country and each state in the United States had its own controversy as voices were raised on both sides of the issue. At the turn of the twentieth century, Brigham Young, Jr., was one apostle who steadfastly opposed thus deliberately allowing oneself to be infected with cowpox in order to build up antibodies against smallpox. "God alone can avert the contagious diseases and calamities coming upon the people," he wrote. Fortunately, other leaders around the turn of the century did not think the same way, and compulsory vaccination was adopted in Utah as well as other states.

As late as 1924, there were 45,255 cases of smallpox in the United States and 814 deaths. By 1950 it had virtually disappeared. In other countries, progress was slower.

Then there was influenza. Starting in the United States in 1918, spreading to the soldiers in France, ultimately affecting many parts of the world, the disease was devastating. In that year, 621,000 soldiers caught the flu — one out of six combatants — and 43,000 of them died.

Civilian populations were quickly infected. The first cases in Salt Lake City were reported on October 3. On a single day, October 15, the city reported 161 new cases and six deaths, and sixty-five other towns in Utah reported outbreaks. By the end of the month there were more than 1500 cases and 117 deaths. Imagining how we would react to such an attack now, I think we can say that influenza had people’’s attention.

What could be done? Quarantine was the immediate answer. Homes where anyone had the flu were marked with a sign in large letters reading INFLUENZA. The state health officer banned public gatherings. At his urging, schools and universities closed down until January. There were to be no theater performances and no church meetings.

World War I had dragged on more than four years. Never had any military conflict produced such casualties. When an armistice was signed on November 11, joy erupted. Yet people were dying of influenza. The resulting emotional confusion bordered on trauma.

The prohibition against public gatherings was swept aside as the Salt Lake City "went mad" in what one reporter called "a merger of the wildest New Year's Eve demonstration when John Barleycorn wielded the scepter, with the biggest Labor Day and Fourth of July manifestations and the greatest of all festivals and carnivals ever witnessed in Salt Lake all rolled into one."

The celebration lasted through the day and far into the night. A parade planned for 3 p.m. degenerated into "happy chaos," a traffic jam that prevented the parade from proceeding. On Main Street between First and Second South three bands, unable to participate in the parade, alternated in playing for dances.

"Government of the streets was banished and a screaming multitude laughing and gay took possession, a riotous revel." Confetti fell from the windows above. Noise was incessant, coming from whistles, horns, cans banged together, drums, and the bands who could scarcely make themselves heard. A locomotive traveled along the streetcar tracks, emitting "an incessant shrieking scream." "Dignity was flung aside," wrote the reporter.

In the aftermath of the celebration, new cases of influenza broke out. Patients must be isolated, health officials insisted, and any house with an influenza patient must be placarded. Streetcars were limited in the number of passengers they could carry. Business hours at stores were shortened. Funeral services could not exceed thirty (later fifteen) minutes, and corteges were limited to four vehicles, including the hearse. Masks were to be worn in sick rooms and other specified places.

After the disease had run its course, the state health commissioner estimated that there had been at least 130,000 cases of influenza in Utah in 1918-19. Of those afflicted, the percentage of deaths was in the vicinity of 4 percent.

This season of extremes — grief for those lost to disease and paroxysms of joy over the end of the war — saw an important transition in the Church. Just prior to October conference in 1918, President Joseph F. Smith, who had been in precarious health, witnessed a vision of the spirit world (now Section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants). On November 19, he died from an attack of pleurisy that degenerated into pneumonia. Because of the influenza epidemic, no public funeral was held.

A few days prior to his death, President Smith received a caller — Heber J. Grant, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Feebly taking Grant’s hand, the Church president said, "The Lord bless you, my boy, the Lord bless you. You have a great responsibility. Always remember that this is the Lord’s work, and not man’s." Heber J. Grant served as prophet, seer, and revelator from 1918 to 1945.

Because of continuing concern over health conditions, general conference was not held in April 1919. Postponed for two months, it convened in June. "One of the most desolating scourges of sickness ever known has passed over the land," said Elder Anthony W. Ivins. "An unprecedented number of our Church members have been stricken, and many of our most useful and esteemed brethren and sisters have passed away." My close friend Leonard Arrington, whose research I have utilized here, almost died of influenza as an infant in Idaho. Fortunately he survived and lived until 1999, blessing the lives of many of us.

Disease can be a great equalizer. At the mercy of microorganisms for which there is no known antidote or none available, people naturally feel vulnerable. Of course, all do not react in the same way. The unspeakable horrors of the Black Death in Tuscany are vividly described by Giovanni Boccaccio at the beginning of his Decameron, a work that is itself evidence that some took refuge in escapism and riotous living.

Others responded differently. During the successive phases of this bubonic plague in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many European Christians prayed, lit candles, made donations to the church, took holy orders, even flagellated themselves in the hopes of appeasing God.

Similar differences are observed in 1918 and during other catastrophes. Some experience a "mighty change," or reinvigorate a faltering faith, draw close to God in prayer, and "always remember him." Others imbibe alcohol, shoot drugs, pathetically seek ultimate ecstasy in sexual abandon, and display the superficiality of their disconnected lives. Epidemics have a dramatic way of forcing us to reveal who we truly are.

Come to think of it, the same is true of the individual afflictions that sooner or later affect almost everyone during the course of our life on earth.

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Davis Bitton, a long-time contributor to Meridian, passed away in early 2007. In memory and tribute to his fine work, we are reprinting his columns. He was a University of Utah history professor. After serving a mission in France, he graduated from BYU and then received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. For ten years he was assistant Church historian. His most recent books are "Images of the Prophet Joseph Smith" and "George Q. Cannon: A Biography."