Influenza was not the only outbreak that struck North Dakota in 1918. LaMoure County became a hot spot for trachoma, a contagious eye disease that can lead to blindness. Barnes, Dickey and Stutsman counties also had cases.
Five LaMoure County children were sent to a trachoma hospital in Kentucky for treatment, and when 19 cases emerged in the state, officials called for federal aid. A U.S. Public Health Service doctor visited the state and conducted eye exams of schoolchildren. In LaMoure County alone, he found 120 positive cases and 350 suspected cases. Those were big numbers when you consider that the county population was only about 11,000 residents.
Finding “an enormous number” of cases in North Dakota, the doctor recommended a hospital be established as soon as possible. It appears the federal government leased a LaMoure family’s home for the hospital, which opened just before Christmas in 1918. It had one physician and two nurses. Examinations, treatment and housing were free to patients. The LaMoure site was the seventh federal trachoma hospital, and the only one west of the Mississippi River.
Trachoma was a dreaded disease of the era. Immigrants were screened for it at Ellis Island. The condition also precluded military service.
The trachoma hospitals were more like dispensaries and had a small bed capacity. The LaMoure hospital held free examinations throughout North Dakota, and took patients from as far as McLean County.
A school board in LaMoure County forbade children with diagnosed or suspected trachoma from attending school, unless they were under treatment. In 1919, North Dakota’s Supreme Court upheld the school district’s right to do so, citing “the seriousness of the disease and its communicable character.”
Records indicate that North Dakota’s trachoma hospital treated hundreds of people. But it was hard to compel some families to seek treatment. Health officials thought that better cooperation with state authorities or moving the hospital might help. The reluctance might also stem from fears of the treatments used, which could include operations for scraping the eyes and inverting the eyelids. Today, antibiotics are used.
On this date in 1922, news was circulating that the hospital faced closure due to lack of patronage. Its physician had been transferred to Kentucky. A LaMoure doctor was put in charge, but the state-federal trachoma hospital still closed – in 1923.
Dakota Datebook by Jack Dura
Sources:
Jamestown Weekly Alert. 1917, August 16. Page 8
The Bismarck Tribune. 1918, January 5. Page 4
The Bismarck Tribune. 1918, April 20. Page 1
Grand Forks Herald. 1918, April 22. Page 2
Grand Forks Herald. 1918, May 23. Page 3
The Weekly Times-Record. 1918, July 25. Page 4
Grand Forks Herald. 1918, August 14. Page 3
The Oakes Times. 1918, August 29. Page 8
Grand Forks Herald. 1918, December 19. Page 2
The Bismarck Tribune. 1919, April 23. Page 1
The Bowbells Tribune. 1919, May 2. Page 8
The Washburn Leader. 1921, August 12. Page 1
Emmons County Record. 1921, October 20. Page 4
Emmons County Record. 1921, November 24. Page 3
The Washburn Leader. 1922, September 8. Page 2
The Weekly Times-Record. 1922, October 5. Page 6
United States Public Health Service. (1920). Annual report of the surgeon general. U.S. Government
Printing Office
United States Public Health Service. (1924). Annual report of the surgeon general. U.S. Government Printing Office
U.S. Congress House Committee on Appropriations. (1923). Hearing(s) before subcommittee of House committee on appropriations … in charge of treasury department appropriation bill for 1923. U.S. Government Printing Office
Minnesota Municipalities, Vol. 9, 1924, League of Minnesota Municipalities
U.S. Census Bureau. (1920). Fourteenth census of the United States taken in the year 1920. Norman Ross Publishing: University of Chicago
nps.gov/elis/learn/education/upload/Trachoma-Through-History-2.pdf
