'Samuel Crumbine'

https://cdm16884.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16884coll1/id/1711/rec/1Schools, public gatherings, religious services cancelled. People urged to stay at home, wash hands, avoid hand-to-face contact. Health workers overwhelmed by thousands of stricken people. Sound familiar? Well, this was the state of things in 1920 during an influenza pandemic that spread across the world. Read the article and accompanying reports of Kansas newspapers as this deadly disease spread across the state one hundred years ago. All available at the State Library of Kansas' KGI Online Library...

If you enjoyed your soft drinks spiked with coal tar and used strychnine for stomach indigestion, or if you craved that cough syrup laced with heroin and relished your chewing gum powdered in talc, then you were not pleased with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. The Kansas State Health Board embraced these laws under the leadership of Dr. Samuel Crumbine. Regulations, science and education were integrated by the health board to fight adulterated food products and the spread of contagious diseases. Read the KGI Blog, Part 3 of a series on the Kansas State Board of Health's early years, written by Donna Casement and provided by the State Library of Kansas' KGI Online Library.

The common house fly would become the antagonist in a life and death battle waged by the Kansas State Board of Health in the early twentieth century. The fly was the "enemy of the human race" and newspapers urged it's readers to not allow a single fly in their homes any more than they would "a rattlesnake or a cat with the rabies"'. A light bulb moment at a local baseball game would inspire a catchy phrase that would travel worldwide, "Swat the Fly".