Yellow Fever at Miami 41


launches. Large sailing ships and steamboats from distant ports called
at the Port of Miami bringing passengers and cargo on regular sched-
ules.
 By 1899, Miami boasted an inexhaustible supply of fine water
from "a spring in the Everglades" near the rapids in the river (about
Northwest Twentieth Street, one-fifth mile west of Twenty-seventh
Avenue). Miami also had one-and-a-half miles of sanitary sewer
with an outfall in the river at the foot of Miami Avenue. Most of the
householders, however, were dependent on privies, the buckets of
which were to be emptied at least weekly by the city scavenger.
Electricity from the generators at the Royal Palm Hotel was avail-
able to homes and businesses in the downtown area. Telephones
came to Miami in February 1899.5

 Four Physicians In Miami

 The young city had the services of four physicians: James Mary
Jackson, Peter Thomas Skaggs, Edwin Worth Pugh and Ruben Har-
rison Huddleston. Beyond the city limits were John Gordon DuPuis
and Henrietta W. Martens in Lemon City and James W. Jackson and
 Eleanor Galt Simmons in Coconut
 Grove.
 In the spring of 1899, prepara-
 tions were underway to build a City
 Hospital at Northeast Ninth Street and
 Biscayne Boulevard on land donated
 by Henry M. Flagler. He also contrib-
 uted $4,500 toward construction with
 the proviso that the city equip and man-
 I \ age the hospital.'6
 Meanwhile, in the spring of 1899,
 Miami's physicians were occupied
 with routine doctoring. There were the .
 usual obstetrical cases, respiratory and -

The four doctors of Miami (clockwise from top left): Dr. James M. Jackson
(Courtesy of Dr. William M. Straight); Dr. Peter Thomas Skaggs (Courtesy
of Miss Virginia Skaggs); Dr. Ruben Harrison Huddleston and Dr. Edwin
Worth Pugh (FromHistory ofMedicine in Dade County, Florida, by Dr. John
Gordon DuPuis).