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Cathy Wurzer
St. Paul, Minn.

How the Twin Cities handled smallpox in 1924

Smallpox notice
These notices from the smallpox epidemic of 1924 are from a collection held at the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine at the University of Minnesota.
Courtesy Dominique Tobbel

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Minnesota health officials are continuing to brace for potential Ebola cases in the state.

It's expected that the response to any outbreak would be the same in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.

But that wasn't the case in 1924 when a smallpox epidemic hit the Twin Cities.

MPR News' Cathy Wurzer spoke with Dominique Tobbel, a history of medicine professor at the University of Minnesota about that outbreak.

Smallpox
Papers from the smallpox outbreak of 1924.
Courtesy Dominique Tobbel

Four hundred people died in the Twin Cities during that outbreak -- 90 percent of them lived in Minneapolis, according the Minnesota Historical Society.

Tobbel said as smallpox spread across the metro that year, the two cities took remarkably different tactics against the disease.