42 TEQUESTA


urinary tract infections, rattlesnake bites, accidents resulting in dislo
cations or fractures, knife and gunshot wounds from drunken fights,
and hernias that sometimes became strangulated and required sur-
gery. Tuberculosis was always in the community as people with the
disease came to Miami hoping to get well. There were occasional
abdominal infections (possibly appendicitis or diverticulitis of the
colon) that lead to abdominal abscesses which had to be drained. For
instance, on Wednesday, April 26, 1899, Drs. Eleanor Galt Simmons
and James M. Jackson drained a liver abscess from which Claude
Rose had been suffering five months.
 Then, too, there were cases of fever. On April 7th, The Miami
Metropolis noted that Mrs. Harry Budge, wife of the city's hard-
ware dealer, "is resting more easily, the fever having been abated."
Two weeks later, the paper stated that this was a case of typhoid
fever. In June, another case of typhoid was reported in the illness of
Ed Hinckson who lived on the Miami River. Although several Miami
pioneers speak of a typhoid epidemic in 1899, these are the only
mentions of typhoid in the newspaper of 1899; perhaps they are
thinking of the epidemic of 1898.

 The First Scare

 Starting about mid-July and continuing through September, there
were many cases of fever, particularly in the area of the city known
as "the Hammock,"7 which Dr. Jackson diagnosed as dengue fever.8
Jackson's diagnoses were corroborated by Dr. J. Louis Horsey, As-
sistant State Health Officer, and later by Dr. Joseph Yates Porter,
the Florida State Health Officer, both of whom had extensive ex-
perience with epidemic dengue.9 However, only the barest mention
of fever appears in the Metropolis and never the word, "dengue."
Although Jackson later said he had 200 or 300 cases and that the
other physicians took care of 100 more, none of them mentioned
dengue lest the populace panic thinking the epidemic was in reality
yellow fever.10
 Yellow fever was a scourge in Florida about every two years during
the nineteenth century. A small number of cases were known to be present
in Havana year around. Therefore, in February 1899, well before the "fever
season," Dr. James M. Jackson, Health Officer of the Port of
Miami, was ordered to fumigate all second class baggage arriving