Jimmy Orr's Fateful Journey

The Rev. James Robert Orr was finishing a rugged five-year tour of duty sowing the Protestant gospel on the stony soil of Brazil's Parana state, near the Argentine border. Now the gaunt, 59-year-old Baptist was heading home for Canada. With his wife and their three youngest children, he jeeped into Laranjeiras do Sul (pop. 2,000) and went to a local doctor for certificates of vaccination. Told that the Orrs had all been vaccinated six or seven years earlier, the doctor perfunctorily issued "certificates of immunity."

Three weeks later, just as perfunctorily, health officers at New York's Idlewild International Airport took the certificates at face value. They gave Missionary Orr a card on which was written: "As a precaution against introduction of smallpox: If you should develop suspicious symptoms of illness (such as chills, fever, weakness, loss of appetite, diarrhea) within the next seven to sixteen days, present this card promptly to a private physician or to health officers in your community. This is required by law." The word smallpox was in large letters. Orr pocketed the card and promptly forgot it. As a result, most of North and South America and parts of Europe waited anxiously last week while hundreds of health officers tracked down thousands of the traveling Orrs' fellow passengers and casual contacts to have them revaccinated. For one of the Orr children had carried smallpox from continent to continent.

Flu or Chickenpox? Rare in the U.S. and Canada for almost half a century, and unknown there since 1947, smallpox is endemic in Brazil; 2,644 cases were reported in 1960, and 1,411 in 1961. Near Laranjeiras the Orrs had visited a ranch where children were down with the pox, but nobody paid much heed or knew what kind.* By the time the Orrs got to bustling, ultramodern Sao Paulo, 400 miles away, James William Orr, 14, complained of fever and a sore throat. A local doctor diagnosed influenza and hopefully dosed him vith medicine. The feverish boy lay around Viracopos airport for hours before he flew, with 82 other travelers, on a Comet 4 jet to Idlewild.

From Idlewild the Orrs taxied to Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal (the driver tried to overcharge them). In the busy, navelike waiting room, with its constant turnover of travelers, Jimmy Orr lay on a bench for almost seven hours sweating out a train for Toronto. While his family went to a nearby lunch counter for a snack, a motherly Negro tried to make the boy more comfortable. Then the five Orrs boarded the North Star, and sat up all night as the coach made seemingly unlimited stops. As they neared Toronto, Jimmy opened his shirt, looked at the itching red spots, and said: "Dad, I think it's chickenpox."

Too Late. A Toronto physician and family friend, Dr. Ernest K. Ranney, felt so sure it was only chickenpox that he took the Orrs to stay at his parents' home. Two days later, Mrs. Orr and the two youngest children left by train for Alberta. Missionary Orr crisscrossed Toronto all week long by bus and subway, shopping in department stores, going every evening to High Park Baptist Church. He took a bus to a Bible camp to address 20 children from a dozen towns. Only after that did he learn that he and his hosts and the rest of his family in Alberta were all quarantined; doctors suspected that Jimmy had smallpox. They put the boy in isolation at Riverdale Hospital. There the diagnosis was confirmed. Too late, Orr took the unread U.S. warning card from his pocket.

Canadian health authorities alerted their counterparts in every city where Jimmy might have spread the infection. The virus is not only spread by direct contact, but may travel several feet on a patient's breath, and farther on air currents. Aerolineas Argentinas and the railroads over which the Orrs had traveled began the thankless job of trying to track down every fellow passenger and line employee who had been near the boy. At Idlewild 800 vaccinations were hurriedly given, and 3,500 elsewhere in New York City. Not surprisingly, the hardest man to find was the cab driver, who was in greatest danger because Jimmy had sat next to him. New York police promised to overlook the charge of overcharging, if only he would show up for vaccination.

At week's end, Jimmy Orr was on the mend and eating well. His case of smallpox, whether alastrim or true variola, was unusually mild; evidently, the immunity from his long-ago vaccination had not completely worn off. Vaccinated contacts could expect similarly mild cases, especially if they took the precaution of being revaccinated as soon as they learned of their danger. But for anybody with no immunity against smallpox, casual contact with Jimmy Orr still held the threat of severe, disfiguring and possibly fatal disease.

* Besides the unrelated chickenpox, Brazilians also suffer from alastrim (from alastrar, to spread), a milder form of smallpox. Alastrim is known elsewhere as amaas, Cuban itch, glass pox, Kaffir pox, milkpox, paravariola, Philippine itch, pseudovariola, Samoa pox, Sanaga pox and whitepox.

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