When smallpox appeared in Derby, Connecticut, fear spread almost as quickly as the disease.
C.P. Cook was taken to the town pesthouse, isolated from everyone while his illness worsened. But once he was there, no local physician would volunteer to care for him. The town needed help, and the call finally reached Yale Medical School.
Only one student stepped forward.
Samuel Gurney, a senior medical student, went to Derby and entered the pesthouse without hesitation. He said he had no fear of smallpox and agreed to nurse the sick man. But as soon as he took charge of the patient, the town authorities turned the pesthouse into a prison.
No one was allowed within 100 feet of the building. People ran from Gurney when he tried to get medicine. Even prescriptions had to be shouted from an upper window through a megaphone.
Trapped inside with his patient, Gurney found a way to survive the quarantine, treat Cook, and communicate with the outside world by basket and cord.
Imprisoned in a Pesthouse
DERBY, Connecticut. — Isolated in the pesthouse at Derby are C.P. Cook, a smallpox patient, and Samuel Gurney, a member of the senior class of the Yale Medical School. Cook is very ill, and Gurney, who volunteered to nurse him, is practically a prisoner in the pesthouse. The town authorities have forbidden anyone to go within 100 feet of the building in which they are.
There is a smallpox scare in Derby. When Cook developed the disease and was removed to the pesthouse, no physician in Derby would volunteer to care for him. In a quandary, officials sent to a physician in Bridgeport, who sent word he would come, but he afterward wired that his professional engagements would not permit him to act.
Then word was sent to the Yale Medical School in New Haven, asking for a nurse for Cook. Volunteers were called for from the senior class, Gurney was the only one to respond.
He immediately went to Derby and told the authorities there he had no fear of smallpox and would be glad to nurse Cook. His services were gladly accepted and he went at once to the pesthouse, where he found the patient, the only occupant of the building.
Gurney made a diagnosis and then sought medicine, but the people in the town ran from him and the authorities said he must remain within the pesthouse as a measure of safety to the inhabitants of Derby.
Then Gurney asked that medicines be carried to him, but no one would do it. They would not come near enough to take the prescription from his hand.
Gurney then shouted for some one to place a megaphone in the yard, which was done. The man who placed it there fled, and Gurney took it to the house. From an upper window he shouted his prescriptions to a druggist’s clerk, who wrote them down and filled them. The clerk then brought the medicine to the yard of the pesthouse and ran. Gurney went out and got the medicine and then rigged up a trolley line.
Now he shouts his wants to a messenger 100 yards away, and the latter puts them in a basket, which Gurney draws to the pesthouse with a cord. Gurney’s patient is progressing well.
Source: The Evening Times. Washington, D.C. January 12, 1901.
