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The Great Serum Race Blazing the Iditarod Trail
By Debbie S. Miller Walker & Company Copyright © 2006 Debbie S. Miller
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780802777232
Chapter One On a dusky January afternoon in 1925, Dr. Welch walked quickly toward the outskirts of Nome. Sled dogs howled from their yards. Outside a small cabin, a worried Inupiat Eskimo mother greeted the doctor. She led him into her home where two small children lay in bed, struggling to breathe.
"Can you open your mouth?" Dr. Welch asked the three-year-old boy.
The weak child tried to open his mouth, but it was too painful for his swollen throat. His fever was extremely high. Dr. Welch comforted the mother and children, but there was little he could do. The next day, both children died.
Soon after, another girl, Bessie Stanley, was miserable with the same symptoms. But this time, Dr. Welch could examine Bessie's throat. He immediately recognized the symptoms of diphtheria. Poor Bessie would not live through the night.
Diphtheria. Dr. Welch had not seen a case in twenty years. This fast-spreading disease could wipe out the entire community of more than 1,400 people. Dr. Welch immediately met with the city council and recommended a quarantine. The schools and other public places were closed. Community leaders told people to stay in their homes.
There was only one way to fight diphtheria. The town needed a supply of antitoxin serum. Dr. Welch sent out a desperateplea for help by radio telegraph. The message soon reached Governor Bone in Juneau and other important officials. Newspapers across the nation picked up word that the historic gold rush town needed emergency help.
The nearest supply of serum was at a hospital in Anchorage, 1,000 males away, across a snowbound wilderness. Officials considered flying the serum to Nome, but it was too dangerous to operate open cockpit planes in extreme-cold temperatures. In those days; planes were used only during the summer. Nome was an icebound port, so boats were not an option. The serum could travel partway by train, and then the only safe means of transport was by sled dog team.
On January 26, an Anchorage doctor carefully packed the glass bottles of serum for the long journey. The bottles had to be protected to keep the serum from freezing. He gave the twenty-pound bundle to the conductor at the train, station. Soon, steam engine 66 began to chug its way north to Nenana, the closest railroad link to Nome. Nenana lay nearly 300 miles away, beyond the tallest mountains of North America.
On the frozen Tanana River, five-year-old Alfred John could hear the distant roar of the steam engine. His Athabaskan Indian family lived in a cabin near the train station in Nenana. Although it was late at night and nearly fifty degrees below zero, Alfred and his mother bundled up in their warmest caribou legskin boots and fur-lined parkas and walked to the station to greet the train.
As they waited by the tracks in the moonlight, Alfred watched the huge locomotive hiss steam into the frozen sky and slow to a screeching halt. He saw men unload the freight, and the conductor hand the serum package to Bill Shannon. Bill was the first of twenty mushers to carry the serum in a dog team relay to Nome. These brave men and their best dogs would travel nearly 700 miles on a snow-packed mail trail.
Bill covered the serum with a bear hide and lashed it to the sled. His strongest team of nine malamutes harked and were anxious to move. Just before midnight on January 27, Bill waved good-bye to Alfred and shouted to his dogs. Swoosh! Into the winter night, the dog team sped toward Tolovana, the first relay stop some fifty-two miles away.
Bill knew every turn of the trail. Like many of the mushers, his regular job was to transport mail and freight with his dog team. Traveling long distances in the extreme cold was a dangerous challenge. If the dogs ran too fast and breathed too deeply, they could frost their lungs. When the team reached bitter-cold stretches along the river, Bill slowed his dogs to protect them. He often ran behind the sled to keep himself warm.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Great Serum Race by Debbie S. Miller Copyright © 2006 by Debbie S. Miller. Excerpted by permission.
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