Hey Starsky! This information is taken from a link I've provided earlier in this board:
http://www.serumrun.org/History.htm, which is one of the best web resources available for the real history. You might want to bookmark it.
Epidemic
The only doctor in Nome and the surrounding communities was Curtis Welch, who was supported by four nurses at the 24-bed Maynard Columbus Hospital. In the summer of 1924, his supply of 8,000 units of diphtheria antitoxin (from 1918) expired, but the order he placed with the health commissioner in Juneau did not arrive before the port closed.
Shortly after the departure of the last ship of the year, the Alameda, a two-year old Inuit from the nearby village of Holy Cross became the first to display symptoms of diphtheria. Welch diagnosed it as tonsillitis, dismissing diphtheria because no one else in the child's family or village showed signs of the disease, which is extremely contagious and can survive for weeks outside the body. The child died the next morning, and an abnormally large number of cases of tonsillitis were diagnosed through December, including another fatality on December 28, which is rare. The child's mother refused to allow an autopsy. Two more Inuit children died, and on January 20 the first case of diphtheria was diagnosed in 3 year old Bill Barnett, who had the characteristic grayish lesions on his throat and in his nasal membranes. Welch did not adminster the antitoxin, because he was worried the expired batch might weaken the boy, who died the next day.
On January 21, seven year old Bessie Stanley was diagnosed in the late stages of the disease, and was injected with 6,000 units of antitoxin. She died later that day. The same evening, Welch called Mayor George Maynard, and arranged an emergency town council meeting. Welch announced he needed at least one million units to stave off an epidemic. The council immediately implemented a quarantine, and Emily Morgan was appointed Quarantine Nurse.
On January 22, 1925, Welch sent a radio telegram via the U.S. Army Signal Corps and alerted all major towns in Alaska including the governor in Juneau of the public health risk. A second to the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington, D.C. read:
AN EPIDEMIC OF DIPHTHERIA IS ALMOST INEVITABLE HERE STOP I AM IN URGENT NEED OF ONE MILLION UNITS OF DIPHTHERIA ANTITOXIN STOP MAIL IS ONLY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION STOP I HAVE MADE APPLICATION TO COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH OF THE TERRITORIES FOR ANTITOXIN ALREADY STOP THERE ARE ABOUT 3000¢WHITE [sic] NATIVES IN THE DISTRICT
By January 24 there were two more fatalities, and Welch and Morgan diagnosed 20 more confirmed cases, and 50 more at risk. The number of people threatened in the area of northwest Alaska centered around Nome was about 10,000, and the expected mortality rate was close to 100 percent without the antitoxin. A previous influenza epidemic across the Seward Peninsula in 1918 and 1919 wiped out about 50 percent of the native population of Nome, and 8 percent of the native population of Alaska. More than 1,000 people died in northwest Alaska, and double that across the state, and the majority were Inuit. The Native Americans had no resistance to either of these diseases.
Always glad to help! 