If Samuel Crumbine were alive today, he’d recognize the precautions that Kansans are taking to limit COVID-19.
There’s little doubt he would approve of the closing of schools, theaters and restaurants.
He would worry about Kansas hospitals and wonder if their staffs are prepared for a crisis.
But mostly, he’d be determining how, once again, the government could persuade the public to take seriously the threat of a global pandemic.
It was 102 years ago that Crumbine, a public health reformer and executive officer of the Kansas State Board of Health faced down a similar crisis — the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
At the turn of the 20th century, he had led public health campaigns that encouraged Kansans to “swat the fly” to combat the spread of diseases, had “Don’t Spit on the Sidewalk” emblazoned on bricks and had encouraged the replacement of common drinking cups on trains and in public buildings with paper cups.
“If you are talking about Crumbine, then you realize he was a very early, early leader in public health – not just in Kansas, but nationally,” said Marilyn Irvin Holt, a historian and author based in Abilene and a consultant for PBS documentaries.
The 1918 flu pandemic began at Crumbine’s back door — in western Kansas — and flared up among men reporting for duty at Fort Riley. It soon spread worldwide in three distinct waves during 1918 and 1919, causing more than 50 million deaths and infecting nearly a third of the world’s population.
Because of Crumbine and a legion of nurses who helped champion public health, Kansas in the late 1800s and early 1900s was a leader in hygiene and disease prevention.
We’ve been here before
Several times over its 159-year history, Kansas has been called on to be a leader in the field of public health. In April 1957, the aptly named town of Protection in Comanche County became the first community in the nation in which everyone was immunized against polio.
Dave Webb, a Kansas historian and retired assistant director of the Kansas Heritage Center, was 8 years old when the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, later known as the March of Dimes, arrived in Protection.
“They staged some events and took newsreel footage of it and used it in a national campaign,” Webb said, “to say that ‘Everyone in Protection is protected against polio. Why, you should be, too!’ ”
There was a barbecue and town parade, and Webb remembers riding on a float, dressed as a pioneer boy.
“I know that ABC ran a segment about it on the evening news and I was playing outside and Mom yelled, ‘Come in, quick!’ And, I didn’t come in very quickly and when I got there, she said, ‘Well, you were just on the evening news.’ They had a clip of the parade and showed the float I was riding on. I was crushed. I had missed my TV debut.”
