Health landscape was no picnic

This journal edition celebrated
the centennial of public health
care in Florida

Family health matters are claiming my time, energy and focus right now. I'm distracted and not thinking about my monthly blog post. But the deadline is here. 

Since health is foremost in my mind, I did a Google search about Florida's health history. I found an interesting Florida Department of Health PDF created in 1989 to mark the centennial of public health care in the state. It's a reprint, with permission, of an article that ran in the Florida Journal of Public Health that same year. 

The author, William J. Bigler, Ph.D., had been with the state health department since the 1950s and had a firm grip on the facts. Some of those facts, though, were scary. 

I like to think about the sunnier side of life in pioneer Florida. Diseases, pests, unsanitary conditions and lack of medical knowledge remind me there were other sides to life. The document's information made me thankful for progress made in healthcare and medical technology since the late 1800s and early 1900s. We've come light years, really. 

Here are some of the issues early Floridians encountered at various times and in various parts of the state: smallpox, yellow fever, dengue fever, tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, typhoid, black plague. The plague struck just once, at least according to records. But that once was in the twentieth century - 1920 to be exact. Yellow fever, on the other hand, terrorized Floridians repeatedly. In one example, the PDF recounts how all but 100 of Fernandina's then-population of 1,600 were infected in 1877. Hundreds of them died. 

And, of course, there was the 1918 influenza pandemic, known at the time as Spanish flu. It lasted a few years, as our COVID one is doing. But they didn't have a vaccine that worked in 1918. In one month alone that year, the death rate was 29 percent. Over a four-month period, it was about 25 percent.

Well, this blog post has certainly been less than cheerful. I'm distracted by family matters and sad about the war victims in Ukraine and weary that yet another COVID variant is rearing its head. At least it's not causing severe illness. I'll take any good news I can get.

If you've a mind to read more, take a look at the documents available on the Florida Health Association's website page devoted to the history of Florida's public health. And be glad we live when we do.