Disproportionate Population

Frnhly harntested. ANNALJ OF EPIDEMIOLOGY tr tlHSt{iNs #Y rdo JArufrT fV!AVSfi tlr JAKE LEG Ir cifr How the bluesdiagnosed a medicalmystery. 6€r. fl, C^rli BY DAN BAUM DEINE EARRINGS T\r.John Morgan, a professorat crete event." He sat back and spread his &ry "Behold q J.-lthe City Universityof New York hands. the study, through fotk ill -rq^'S Medical School,likesto call himself a music, of a substance-inducedepidemic," "Pharmaco-ethnomusicology." pharmaco-ethnomusicologist.His first he said. loveis early-Americanvemacular music, Morgan has been researchingthe jake and his apartment,on the Upper West leg on and offfornventy-sevenyears.He ffi BEAN Side,is stackedwith ancientrecords. has put together a CD collection of sev- Someyears back, Morgan waslistening enteen tunes mentioning it, including to the Allen Brotlers"JakeWalk Blues," one by Gene Autry, and he has written releasedin 7930.In alcazno-backedTen- haJf a dozen medical-joumal articles on ARTICHOKE "I EARRINGS nesseetwang, the brotherssang, cant the subject.In the nineteen-seventies,he eat,I carittalh drinking meanjake, Lord, interviewed a number of the epidemic's I cantwalk." survivingvictims and collected his data, a I.Mevnc & Co. The lyricspinballed through Morgaris teeming baznar of anecdote and chem- 946 Madison Avenue at T4th Street memoryand lit up twice.First wasa lec- istry, in a huge manuscript that has been New York roozr Tel (zrz) 517-7665 turehe'd heard in medicalschool, in 1961: gathering dust for years. He also has a www.imavec.com a professorhad mentioneda strangepa- filthy carton firll of clippings. With a lit- ralpis called'jakewalk" that he hadob- de prodding, he agreed to turn all the "I'm servedduring his residencyin Cincinnati material over to me. not giving up on "I in the thirties.Nextwas a face from Mor- the story mysel-f," he said. just dont gan'schildhood in Ohio, that of a legless mind someoneelse telling it, too." beggarcalled Nigger John. NiggerJohn had had the'jake legi'Morgan recalled A r f"t as we know, the outbreak was his mothertelling him. Shehad saidit in fLfurt detectedin Oklahoma City, by away rhat discouragedfirrther i"q"t y. Eptraim Goldfain, a thirty-four-year-old Stout and bearded,Morgan, who phpician who had emigrated from Ro- is sixry-three,delicately set the arm of mania as a child and had put himself a tumtable on a thiclq spinning record, thtough medical school by operating a and after a moment's hiss we heard streetcar.He was bookistrlv handsome. Paraly "Ishmon what soundedlike puredespair. with swept-backred hair, a cleft chin, and Bracey,one of the Mississippigreats," round hom-rimmed glasses.With a few of ther Morganwhispered. From seven decades partners, he ran a thirty-five-bed clinic caught 'Jake baclgBracey wailed, leg,jake leg, called the Reconstruction Hosoital. On and har what in theworld youtrying to do?Seems February27 ,7930, aman whosi name is who he like everybodyinthe city'smessed up on lost to history staggeredin off the street. few dar accountof drinkingyou." The patient's feet dangled like a mari- oki, fust Strings Morgan has collecteda number of onette's,so that walking involved *irg- place.1 songsabout the jake leg or thejake walk ing them forward and slapping them onto pliesof I Sfrngs for Musical lnstruments "From lGuitar, Basg Orchesfral,Folk & Ethnic themweleam thatsome newkind the floor. He told Goldfain that he had goften i I World's LargestSelection of paralysisappeared in 1930,"he said. strained himself lifting The san "No an automobile, www.juststrings.com songsmention it beforethen." He and a couple of days later his calveshad patients "The beganbending back blunt fingen. begun to tingle. Then his legswent useless ationcri paralysiswas brought on by drinking below the knee. He wasnt in any pain, he Preparc( somethingcalled jake.' It affiiaedenough said,but he could barelyget around. hospital soulsto instigatean entiresubset of folk Sudden paralysisin those daysusually E crtyotn music.Blacks and whiteswere affected. meant polio, but to Goldfain, who re- 5 what lor It renderedmen imDotent.And it rvas counted the patient's history in a medical i Inor no longer inspiring musiciansbv 1934, journal, this didnt look like polio. He *gtttltrvrn whichmeantitwas a catadysmic but dis- didnt pay much attention to the story - the succ THE NEV YORITER,JEPTEMBER 15, 2OO3 Jnut lifting the car. Goldfain thought other visits. The men'sfeet dangled, their in Worcester, Massachusetts.Five hun- *re man'ssymptoms suggested lead poi- legs hung dead below the knee. Some dred practically ovemight in Wichita. Six soning.He orderedblood and spinal- could get around on crutches, some hundred and ninety in Topeka. A thou- iluid tests.They cameback negative. couldntmake theirlegs move atall, some sandin Mississippi.The mysteryplague Later that day,another man appeared, could use neither their legs nor their smoteJohnson Ciry Tennessee,particu- "4. erhibiting the samebizarre palsy.And hands. Goldfain knew at once that this larly hard. great many of the victims then another.By the end of the day, was no contagion. No chil&enwere siclq for the first three or four weeks were Goldfain'sclinic had admitted five pa- and hardlyanywomen.The men Goldfain ashamedto come on the sffeets.but thev tientswith the distinctiveparalysis. (jne sawall lived in a seedypart of tovrn knovrn finally came out," aJohnson Cityvictim wrote in a letter to the Swgeon General's "You office. can go on the streetsofJohn- son City now, and in the run of a day,you can count three or four hundred people in the same condition that I am in." In NewEngland, asin the South, the typical victim was an alcoholic man Jiving alone in a cheap rented room, unem- ployed or holding a menial job. Many were veteransof the Great War. A pat of Cincinnati doctors examined a hun&ed and seventeen victims and found their median age to be forty-seven; almost all of themwere eaminglessthan fortydol- "Afa$ lars a week proportion led lone- "Indeed, somelives," the doctors wrote. it would be difficult to imagine anyone having lesscontact with the people about them than someof thesepatients." fhe economicsof Prohibition, then in I its eleventh yeaq painted a bull's-eye on the urban and small-tolrm poor. City swellscould buy bonded liquor from Can- ada; baclsvoods hillbillies often had ac- 'lls. cessto s Lol,v-income townsfolkdrank what they could get-rubbing alcohol, hair oil, Stemo, doctored antifreeze.What manyof them prefened though,wasjake. Paralysissictims initiallyfeh foot-1fl0pp1t,"and tpalkedwith a rubberJeggedgait. JakewasJamaica ginger extract, one of the hundredsof dubiousbut harrnlesspat- of them, a podiatrist,claimed he had for bootlegging.They struckhimas being ent medicines that.Americans had been caughtthe illnessfrom his own patients, ashamedof their illness.He had only to *ly"g on for a cenhry. A pale-orange and handedGoldfain a list of the ones lookatthem,and the gimyscratdr houses concoction packagedin a two-ounce glass who had gone foot-floppy in the past they lived in, to know they were stew- bottle, it was supposed to treat catarrh, "late few days.The list had sixry-fivenarnes. bums,boozegobs, hooch histers, drunls. flatulence, and menstruation." Be- Oklahoma in 1930 was a hard-luck Within a few davs.in variouslocales causeit was as much as eighty-five-per- place.Thanks to price-killing oversup- in the Easqthe South,and the Midwest, cent alcohol, it packed the kick of fow pliesof wheatand cotton,its peoplehad men beganfolding up. Somefound that jiggers of Scotch. And it was legal. Pat- gotten a head start on the Depression. they couldnt climb out of bed in the ent medicines had been providing an end The samedayrhatGoldfain sawhis five moming. Thosewho could stillwalk all run around temoerancelaws sinceMaine patients,the AmericanHospital Associ had the samerubber{egged gait; one becamethe fusl stateto go dry, in 1851. ationcriticized Oklahoma City's medical doctorin a RhodeIsland hosoitalfooded A botde costing thirty-five cents was preparedness,noting that it had fewer with victims saidthat the min walkedas available in many pharmacies, groceries, "a hospitalbeds per capitathan any other if they were passing*"o"gh field of and even dime stores. Preachers and f; cityof its size.Nowitwas strugglingwith wetgrass."In Providence,a seventy-year- schoolmarms could slip the flat, dear- 5 what lookedlike a full-blor,vnepidemic. old hobo was sffickenat 11 A.M. at the glass botde into a pocket for a discreet F h one frenetic day,Goldfain visited comer of Friendshipand Plain Streets; nip athome. Common rummies, though, E thirry menon thepodiatrist's list, andin he sat down and couldnt get up. The often took a botde into the store'sback i the succeedingweefts followed up with numberswere frightening: fifty-five cases room, which many jake sellers kept as THE NEV YORKER,JEPTEMBER 15, 2OO3 5I f low-rent speakeasies.There they could of alcorubor anything thatd bring on went swimmingly.O. B. Van Fossen, mix the jake with Coca-Colaand have drunk Hed takethis oldblackThree-in- a chemistat the Golden Rule oil refin- their own firtive Iitde parry. One shoepolish and strain it through a ery in Wichita, looked out his window The PureFood and Dnrg Act of 7906 oowdermufi It would be iust asclear as one day to seea dozenjake-leg victims had purified neither.It requiredonly water."Though he lived and performed bathing in the slushponds of warm pe- honestlabelling. If a patent medicine for another twenty-six years,after the troleum refuseand mud. The lime and containedalcohol, morphine, opium, co- Grafton sessionJohnson never recorded sulfur of the slurryr,they'd been told, caine,heroin, alpha orbeta eucaine, chlo- anothersong. Daddy Stovepipe,a singer might do them good. roform, cannabisindica, ctrloral hydrate, who liked to oerformin formalattire.

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