Interesting
tidbits of information show up in the most unexpected places! The following information of the health
condition of Lyon County, Kentucky was found in the Bulletin of the State Board
of Health of Kentucky, Vol. II, No. II, March 1912, p. 449, Biennial Report
1910 and 1911, Google Books, accessed 2019.
The Lyon
County Board of Health in 1910 – 19l1 consisted of Dr. J.H. Hussey, Eddyville;
Dr. W.G. Kinsolving, Eddyville; Dr. C.H. Linn, Kuttawa; Hon. T.P. Gray, County
Judge, Eddyville.
D.J. Travis,
M.D., County Health Officer, wrote a letter to the State Board of Health:
“Gentlemen …
During the year 1909 a very interesting incident occurred in this county and I
am referring to it on account of the important bearing it has had and is having
on the work of our county board.
“In April,
1909, there occurred an unusually extensive outbreak of smallpox in the town of
Kuttawa, in Lyon County, two miles from Eddyville. Our county board at once
adopted the rules of the State board as our chart for preventing the spread of
the disease. We quarantined against Kuttawa, and one Mrs. Allison, who had her
residence in Kuttawa, and was operating a millinery shop in Eddyville, in
violation of the quarantine, brought her infant son from Kuttawa to Eddyville.
The county board directed her to return with her child to Kuttawa or be
subjected to thirty days isolation. She returned to Kuttawa and the board, upon
learning that she had stored the cast-off clothing of the boy in her store,
disinfected the storeroom and stock of goods. She afterwards brought suit in
the circuit court against the county board of health and the sheriff who had
executed the board’s orders. The case was finally disposed of in the Court of
Appeals by an opinion of Judge Settle, on the 24th day of July 1911.
The case is entitled Allison vs Cash, etc. and the opinion appears at page 245,
S.W.R. 137. This action and the court’s final determination of the questions
involved has gone a long way towards settling for all time the question of the
power of a county board to take necessary steps to suppress a contagious epidemic.
Our board was represented by Hon. N.W. Utley …
“In
February, 1910, we had an epidemic of measles with about three hundred cases
and four deaths the fatal cases being complicated with pneumonia. No action was
taken by the local board to suppress the outbreak. We had one open meeting at
which the subject of general hygiene was discussed to the general benefit of
the community.
Respectfully,
D.J. Travis, M.D.
County
Health Officer”
Published 5 March 2020, Western Kentucky Genealogy Blog, http://wkygenealogy.blogspot.com/
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