This fall, students and faculty alike seem to be bracing for more than the usual long, cold winter. Swine Flu, that epidemic we all thought had petered out last spring, has slowly wheedled its way back into our collective consciousness. The running assumption for the time being is that everyone will get sick, but it won’t be that bad; the only reason there is no vaccine yet is because no one knows exactly what we are fighting. But what we do know, or at least think we know, is that Swine Flu is not awful; rather, it is a weaker mutation of the normal virus.

 

If the flu sweeps across campus this semester, then it will not be the first time the University has fallen prey to an epidemic. For some concrete proof, just walk over to the Foss Hill cemetery, where the Olin and Fisk families are buried. Mixed in among past presidents are the headstones of Fu-Sheng Chang ’21 and Diu Gieng Wong ’19, two foreign exchange students who fell prey to an outbreak of typhoid fever in 1918. They never made it back home.

 

Eventually the 1918 outbreak was traced to James P. Boyette, a chef at the University who had been inadvertently spreading the disease for almost a month following Chang’s death. The Hartford Courant broke the story in an article published on March 15, 1918.

“Analogous to the famous ‘typhoid Mary’ the bacillus [bacteria] carrier,” wrote the Courant, “this ‘typhoid James’ was taken from the hospital yesterday.”

 

The year 1918 was a particularly infectious one for the University. The following fall, Spanish Influenza broke out on campus, claiming the life of Wesley Rich, an economics professor, and ultimately causing the University to suspend classes and wait out the storm.

 

After setting up an infirmary in the old dining hall and working to maintain normality for several weeks, the faculty eventually resigned to shut down campus in an effort to stave off a full-blown epidemic.

 

The faculty minutes from October 2, 1918 detail the University’s cautious actions.

“It was voted that on account of the prevailing epidemic of Spanish Influenza, classes and chapel be suspended to be resumed at the discretion of the Administration Committee,” the minutes read.

 

Over the course of the century, the University has been well prepared for any outbreak, but the campus has not always been in the same state of constant vigilance. At the end of the 19th century, a younger Wesleyan was rocked by an epidemic of Typhoid Fever that put the entire campus in peril.

 

On November 5 1894, the Courant broke the news with a brief story titled “The Epidemic at Wesleyan.”

 

“The epidemic at Wesleyan University is increasing and in the last two days it has added ten to its already large list of victims,” read the article. “There no longer remains any doubt that it is typhoid fever.”

 

Two days later, a follow-up article entitled “Wesleyan’s Epidemic” appeared, revealing that the number of sick students had more than doubled. 

 

“A member of the faculty and twenty-three students are down with fever,” read the article. “One student has already died. Five are convalescent, and of those who had gone home five have been pronounced cases of typhoid fever. All the cases with the exception of Professor Fisher have occurred among students boarding in society houses.”

 

In an intensive summary of the investigation, Biology Professor H.W. Conn recounted the search to find the cause of the typhoid outbreak. His essay was published in that season’s Connecticut Medical journal.

 

The report paints a fascinating portrait of the University at the end of the 19th century. At the time, campus activity was centered on fraternity life and so the obvious place to start the investigation was to look into similarities between the affected societies.

 

This proved harder than expected. Originally the two water wells on campus were blamed for the outbreak. The University had been warning students to use tap water instead, but much of the student body had ignored the warning. A test of the water from each well, however, came up negative.

 

Did the typhoid come from the milk the students drank? Each fraternity’s dairy products were from a different milkman, and each milkman also serviced the Middletown community—which was completely unaffected by the epidemic. The same went for produce and meat. 

 

Ultimately the outbreak was traced back to a bad batch of oysters that were served at three different fraternity dinners. Once again, the Courant broke the story with an article titled simply, “Oysters Were the Cause.”

 

“25 percent of the members of the college who attended the three initiatory suppers were raw oysters were served were ill with symptoms of typhoid fever as were several visiting alumni,” reads the article. “Two students who did not attend the suppers were ill with typhoid, but investigation has proved that they also ate raw oysters from the same shipment.”

 

When the slimy culprits—oysters harvested from the Connecticut River—were finally revealed, the campus let out a sigh of relief and began to return to normality. If an outbreak spreads across campus this semester, the reason will not be infected oysters, but a flu that none of us really understands. What is clear is that the University has managed to weather disease in the past, and if anything, we appear to be better prepared now than we have been ever before.