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Epidemics & Public Health
Mishawaka had no hospital for the first seventy-five years of its existence, no city health officer named in any record this build has reached, and no epidemic narrative of its own in the commissioned history — yet it lived every epidemic its century offered, in a river-bottom town whose water came from the river it sickened beside. The banked files carry the institutions and the machinery. This addendum carries the diseases themselves: the ague regime that preceded all machinery, then each epidemic whole and in the order the record gives them — cholera, typhoid, smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, influenza twice over, polio, tuberculosis — and the two epidemics of the modern official record, HIV and COVID-19. Where a disease's Mishawaka record does not exist, its article says so, inside the article, with the settling source named. Nothing is silently skipped.
The ague years: the sickly valley before the regime
1835 – 1858
The valley's first reputation was for health: the founding record of sickness in this county is an address — Dr. L. Humphreys' "Diseases of St. Joseph Valley," delivered to the St. Joseph County Medical Society at South Bend in…
Cholera: the County's Record Is Notre Dame's
1847 – 1855
What the county record gives is Notre Dame's, and it is boundary-printed as Notre Dame's: in Charles Hope's centennial history of the university, "at various times during eight years, from 1847 to 1855, an exhausting epidemic of…
Typhoid and the river-water years
1847 – 1914
The river was the water supply: typhoid arrived in the valley on Humphreys' chronology — rare before 1847, prevalent by the 1850s — and its Mishawaka chapter is the town's water. Mishawaka built its water works in 1873 (the…
Smallpox: a federal line, and a Mishawaka gap
1907 – 1914
The county's smallpox stands in a federal return: the United States Public Health Reports' table of cases reported to 6 December 1907 prints, under Indiana, "St. Joseph County — South Bend… June 16–July 20… 6" — six cases in the…
Diphtheria and scarlet fever: the state's table, the town's silence
1914
The two childhood diseases stand counted at state size: the State Board of Health's December 1914 bulletin, read first-hand, reports diphtheria at 486 cases in 57 counties with 53 deaths, and scarlet fever at 520 cases in 62…
Influenza: the autumn of 1918, and the counted return of January 1920
1918 – 1920
Mishawaka's 1918 stands in the hospitals file, at anchor size here: in the fall of 1918 Spanish influenza put more than 300 Mishawakans sick at one time and killed approximately 25; public gatherings were prohibited from…
Polio: the seat in South Bend, and the clinic record that was not found
1950 – 1962
Where polio care sat for this county, at boundary size: the state established the Northern Indiana Children's Hospital in 1950 at 1234 North Notre Dame Avenue, South Bend, for children crippled by polio — the seat of this…
Tuberculosis and the sanatorium regime: Healthwin, boundary-printed
1913 – 1957
The county's regime sat outside both cities' centers, and isolation came first: tuberculosis in St. Joseph County was treated, at the start, in five quarantine shacks on the ground of the present Potawatomi Park — isolation…
HIV: the official record only
2011 – 2013
Printed as the official record frames it, and no further: HIV in this addendum stands solely in the published counts of the St. Joseph County Department of Health, from its 2013 Annual Report 's clinic tables. The department's…
COVID-19 (i): the county's course and toll, from the official record
2020 – 2021
The toll, as the county published it, dated at each step: St. Joseph County's first confirmed COVID-19 death came on 26 March 2020 — a man in his eighties with severe comorbidities, unnamed in the department's release, as every…
COVID-19 (ii): the health officer's orders, in sequence
2020
Three orders, dated, on the officer's own authority: Public Health Order 1-2020 was issued 3 May 2020 by Dr. Robert M. Einterz, under Indiana Code 16-20-1 and 16-41-9, effective 4 May 2020 at 11:59 p.m. and running to 4 July…
COVID-19 (iii): the vaccination campaign — county course, Mishawaka seats, and the first-dose gap
2020 – 2022
The state's first doses did not land here: Indiana's first COVID-19 vaccinations were given on 14 December 2020 at five pilot hospitals — Parkview in Fort Wayne, Clark Memorial in Jeffersonville, Deaconess in Evansville, IU…