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Dr. Spaulding was married to
Lagreta Evelyn Little Spaulding, a second marriage
entered into at age seventy-three. The
son of Herman M. Spaulding and Nancy E. Parker
Spaulding, Herman had graduated from Chicago Medical
College at Northwestern and served as a professor at
Rush Medical College. (There were conflicting
reports about his undergrad school, some saying
Valparaiso University and others Depauw University.)
He is first found in Chicago as a medical student in
the 1880 U.S. Census. Appointed by Chicago
mayor Dewitt C. Creiger around 1894, Spalding served
as a medical examiner in Chicago's health department
for thirty-two years.
Smallpox vaccinations
Spalding is most often cited in medical journals for his fight
against small pox that began in 1894 with an
outbreak of eleven student victims at the Kershaw
School and peaked in 1901 when his vaccine campaign
is credited for having slowed the spread of the
disease in Chicago. There was a period
from June to December of 1900 in which no cases of
smallpox were discovered in the city. Then a
stonecutter from Wisconsin came to town, showing
symptoms of smallpox while visiting several saloons.
Spaulding was summoned and upon examining the stonecutter
immediately locked him in a closet and called for an
ambulance.
As a prominent proponent of vaccinations Spaulding became
a target for anti-vaccination activists but he
was not intimidated. He was quoted in a 1903
Chicago Health Department bulletin, "To the shame
and reproach of parents the helpless unvaccinated
baby continues to fall a victim to smallpox. Three
of the seven cases this week were children under
three years of age. Since January 1, 1903, 52
children under school age have fallen victims to
smallpox because the parents had neglected to have
the little ones vaccinated."
Smallpox had a 30% fatality rate and is estimated to
have caused 300 million deaths prior to development of a vaccine.
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Fear was in the air
In 1899 Spaulding had headed a group who examined
and tested cows at
the Chicago stock yards discovering mycobacterium bovis tuberculosis in twenty-five. Chicago
would mandate milk pasteurization in 1908. By
1903 he was speaking out about the mistake of seeing
whooping cough and measles as inevitable childhood
illnesses.
Contaminated milk from a dairy in 1907
In January 1907 Spaulding was on the front line when cows from a
Borden Condensed Milk facility in Genoa Junction,
Wisconsin were connected with an epidemic of scarlet
fever and diphtheria in Chicago, with over 300 cases
in two weeks. As deaths mounted, seizing over forty
victims in a week, the building department
temporarily closed thirty-nine dairies and the city authorized hiring a
hundred new health inspectors who reported to Spaudling.
Families were quarantined, schools were closed and disinfected,
street cars were disinfected with a 10% solution of
formaldehyde, the building and health departments
bickered, church gatherings were postponed and public
meetings were closed. Though some communities blamed
contamination of water supplies, in Evanston, IL it
was noted that every case of Scarlet fever developed
along the route of one milk wagon driver.
Spaulding called attention to a
regulation that allowed physicians to choose who
should and should not be quarantined and urged the
city maintain a hospital dedicated to epidemic
patients as the only way to properly isolate victims
and stem the tide. Before the month was out
even Chicago alderman Whalen was forced to admit the
problem was contaminated milk. Spaulding's
task was complicated by opportunists who recognize a
potential windfall. One faith healer offered
to solve the problem with a laying on of hands for a
reduced fee of $75. By months end in Jan 1907
the Borden facility was closed. Despite the
efforts of Spaulding and aldermen, a second outbreak
of disease traced to milk surfaced ten months later.
Rinse and repeat except in the second instance,
tuberculosis joined the list of diseases.
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