"Rush the serum at once. Black Death of the North threatens 11,000 lives. Our
supply is nearly exhausted." Such a message flashed over the air from the
government radio station at Nome, Alaska, one bleak midwinter day a few years
ago. (Written in 1935.)
For "The Black Death of the North"--diphtheria--was ravaging Nome, and if
additional serum did not arrive shortly, the epidemic would strike the entire
population surrounding the town. Fairbanks received this call for help, and,
upon discovery that its supply was inadequate, relayed the communication to the
"Outside." In the next few days the world witnessed one of the most spectacular
and gallant races against death ever staged by man.
The serum was rushed north by boat and train. "When it arrived at the northern
terminus, the ancient Curtis "Jenny," relic of our World War air forces, could
not be coaxed to take off in the fifty-below temperature, so the only remaining
alternative was to send the precious cargo down the Yukon by relays of dog
teams. The best teams and mushers all along the trail stood in readiness at
their designated posts, each waiting to rush the medicine closer toward its
goal. Every hour, every minute, counted in this race to check the onslaughts of
the scourge. Would the serum arrive before the epidemic became uncontrollable?
Would it prove effective in keeping it within bounds, once there?
Men forced themselves and their dogs to the limit. When one dropped, another was
there to take his place. The last two hundred miles of the race were run in one
of the most terrific blizzards ever seen along the Bering Sea coast. An
eighty-mile gale raked the coast, and the thermometer hovered around forty
below. Seppalla, the famous racer, crossed a bay of ice that the storm was
breaking up and driving to sea, rather than to go around the shore, a trip which
would lose several hours. He pushed his team so hard that his gallant leader,
Togo, after facing the slashing fangs of the Alaskan storm over eighty miles,
was ruined for trail service ever afterwards. In short, these intrepid heroes of
the North gave everything they had to get this twenty-pound package of serum to
prostrate Nome, where it meant the difference between life and death.
They took the serum from Nenana, the railroad head, to Nome in five and one-half
days, beating the previous record by three and one-half days! It arrived just in
time to check the devastating scourge and to keep it from ravaging the entire
population of the Seward peninsula.
When man fell, heaven received a message like this: "Man is doomed by the
eternal moral scourge of sin. Send the serum of divine love, or he will perish."
Our Father received the message, and sent the only effective serum for sin, the
most dreadful of all scourges: "God so loved the world, that He gave His
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish."
By John L. Roberts, Signs of the Times, January 1, 1935. With permission from
Dale Galusha dalgal@pacificpress.com
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