As the "dirty thirties" progressed, the blowing soil of the Dust Bowl caused many mysterious illnesses and hundreds of people became ill with something known as dust pneumonia. The prairie dust was extremely fine – smaller than the period at the end of this sentence – with high silica content, which caused a type of silicosis similar to the black lung disease seen in coal miners back east. Asthma, influenza, eye infections, sinusitis, laryngitis and bronchitis were common ailments.
By the mid-1930s, dust pneumonia was rampant. Doctors began to see the elderly, children and infants with wrenching coughing spasms, shortness of breath and body aches. Many patients could not keep down food and were nauseated. Some would die within days of their diagnosis. In Springfield, six people died of dust pneumonia in 1935. In Lamar, doctors often could not reach their patients because of sand drifts in the roads.
The Red Cross declared a medical crisis in 1935 and opened six emergency hospitals in Colorado, Texas and Kansas, some in school gyms that had to be specially sealed to protect patients from incoming dust storms. At one point, the Red Cross handed out 10,000 gauze masks to school children, but the masks would become solidly plugged with dirt in about an hour.
As home remedies, people would rub Vaseline in their noses to try to keep from inhaling the dust. Many people with chronic coughs would make chest plasters out of a mixture of turpentine, kerosene and skunk oil, sometimes mixed with lard.
Photo Credit:
KansasMemory.org, Kansas State Historical Society, Copy and Reuse Restrictions Apply
Sources:
The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan
The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression, Paul Bonnifield
"Hard Times," VHS by Rocky Mountain PBS, 1995
Photo: Kansas State Historical Society
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