Medical staff in Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas are fighting tooth and nail against polio on this weekend in history. As cases rise in 1949, experts say early detection keeps polio wards from being overwhelmed and improves treatment outcomes.
Other headlines include a local candidate’s stand against the KKK and accusations of jailhouse poisoning.
No issues available — July 20, 1924; July 21, 1974.
Saturday
75 years ago
July 20, 1949
• Trace amounts of arsenic were found in the body of a Ripley County man who reportedly fell ill in jail.
Henry McManus, 21, of Doniphan died at Brandon Hospital in Poplar Bluff yesterday evening. He was arrested twice in the previous weeks: once on July 4 for throwing fireworks in the street and again on July 10 for sexually harassing a woman at a baseball game. His family said he fell ill during the second stint in jail, and that McManus blamed a bowl of beans he was served.
McManus was taken to Brandon Hospital, transferred to Poplar Bluff Hospital, and then sent back to Brandon after trying to fight medical staff despite being violently ill. Samples of blood and urine were taken, and the state highway patrol lab detected trace amounts of arsenic. He died on July 19. An autopsy today found “evidence of some disturbance in the intestinal walls,” and McManus’ vital organs are being sent to a crime lab in Jefferson City.
Ripley County Sheriff Jim Featherston claimed McManus couldn’t have been poisoned by jail food, since the Featherston family ate the same food as the prisoners. Meals were prepared by Mrs. Featherston. No one else fell ill, and he said McManus seemed healthy upon release.
An inquest was ordered by the county coroner.
McManus is survived by his parents and 10 siblings.
50 years ago
July 20, 1974
• Sidney Gifford, a chemistry teacher at Poplar Bluff High School, has co-authored a nationally published study.
Gifford graduated from Southeast Missouri State University and partnered with two other alumni, dental student Joe Jecman and fellow high school chemistry teacher Wayne Cherry, to write “Determination of the Stability Constants for Equilibrium Involving Copper (II) and Floroide Ions in Aqueous Solutions.” The paper is the result of Gifford’s master’s thesis and undergrad research by Cherry and Jecman. It was published in the June edition of the American Chemical Society.
Sunday
100 years ago
July 21, 1924
• A candidate for Butler County Sheriff published a front-page appeal to citizens to reject the Ku Klux Klan’s attempts “to become dominant in all our affairs, political, social and religious.”
KKK chapters operated in Southeast Missouri at this time. Charles W. Calvin, a Republican candidate, called the hate group a national threat and knew his stance against them might lose him votes. However, he said, “I am unalterably opposed to the Ku Klux Klan, or to any other organization which, like it, fosters racial and religious prejudice and strife, and the activities of which result in arraying our own citizens against each other... it has no place in the land over which floats the Stars and Stripes.”
75 years ago
July 21, 1949
• Regional doctors and nurses are holding an emergency meeting in Caruthersville tonight, the Daily American Republic reported, “in an effort to stem the spread of dreaded polio.” Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri reported 250 cases this summer. Northeastern Arkansas is the hardest-hit area with 182 cases. The remaining 70-plus regional cases came from Southern Missouri, and at least 50 are from the southeastern counties.
Nationally, 4,985 cases have been reported since January — over 1,200 more than the same period in 1948.
Monday
100 years ago
July 22, 1924
• Almost all houseboaters on the Black River have obeyed the city’s order to vacate. Now, what few remain could be arrested.
The Poplar Bluff City Council declared a no-houseboat zone in city limits two weeks ago. Police Chief Hendrickson reported at a meeting last night that all but three boats complied. One of them was owned by a man who said he paid taxes on the property he docked at, and he refused to move.
One city councilman exclaimed he didn’t care if the man paid “fifteen million dollars taxes every minute,” he should be arrested for violating the new city law.
Hendrickson promised arrests would be made for anyone who didn’t relocate.
75 years ago
July 22, 1949
• Yesterday’s medical conference in Caruthersville highlighted the need for early detection in polio cases to contain its spread and improve chances of recovery, reported the DAR.
Lead speaker Dr. Irwin Hendryson of the University of Colorado Medical Center said, “For every case with paralysis there are ten cases in which there is no paralysis.” (The transmission of polio was little understood at the time but experts had deduced asymptomatic people could carry it, much like diphtheria or typhoid fever.)
Southeast Missouri counties, including Butler, reported eight new polio cases this week and one fatality. All the infected were children.
Early polio detection could enable treatment in local hospitals instead of emergency transfers to overwhelmed St. Louis polio wards, Hendryson explained. It also improved treatment outcomes.
“Early diagnosis of polio is not easy but it is possible, and while even the earliest diagnosis can do nothing to prevent paralysis if there is to be paralysis(,) it can do much to relieve suffering and can give early indication of possible respiratory paralysis and the need for iron lung treatment,” he said.
Butler County has one iron lung, which is stored at a funeral home when not in use.
50 years ago
July 22, 1974
• Thieves struck Lake Wappapello. Sidney Russell, owner of Russell’s Holiday Landing, reported seven outboard motors, two of them large, 50-horsepower models, were jacked from boats between 9:15 p.m. last night and daybreak this morning. Four belonged to Russell and three to visitors.
Five of the boats were found adrift this morning. The other two were discovered beached at Blue Spring, where officers found tire tracks and footprints.