So here’s what we know. Like, really, really know.
In 1925, a dog named Balto helped save the town of Nome, Alaska from a serious diphtheria outbreakIn 1925, the efforts of sled dogs, like Balto and Togo, helped save Nome, Alaska from a serious diphtheria outbreakIn 1925, a serious diphtheria outbreak began to develop in Nome, Alaska- There was a 1925
- In 1925, there was a Nome, Alaska [citation needed]
I wrote more over here on the basics, but: in 1995, the movie Balto introduced a new generation of kids to the dog commemorated by a statue in Central Park. In 2019, the movie Togo introduced a new generation of kids to the alternative theory: that the real hero of the 1925 Nome Serum Run was Togo, a dog owned by Leonhard Seppala, who traveled most of the distance and whose glory was stolen at the last minute by Balto and his owner, Gunnar Kaasen.
(I will attempt to spare you the 1920s newspaper spelling convention of “multiple ways in the same article is a-okay.” You will also see Leonard, Leonhardt, Gunner, Sepalla, Sepella, Kasson, Kassen, etc. but I am going to call them “Leonhard Seppala” and “Gunnar Kaasen”)
To be clear, the idea that this is an “alternative theory” is itself somewhat recent—contemporary reporting through the 20s and 30s is bullish on Togo, and I’d call “but Balto got a statue” maybe something closer to fond ribbing—it seems common knowledge that Togo’s role in the serum run was important. And, to wrap up the central thrust of my argument, I think the preponderance of evidence suggests that the 1925 Nome Serum Run was to a significant degree a publicity stunt, that the diphtheria outbreak itself was a fairly minor event, and that although the antitoxin was (maybe) needed, (probably) useful, and (definitely) used, it is fair to say the principle players had other aims as well:
- To sell papers, on the part of the press
- To sell dogs, on the part of Seppala and Kaasen
- To sell the need for extending airmail service to the remote territories, on the part of Nome
In all cases: mission accomplished! But, I mentioned in the last post that Seppala tried to get Balto’s Central Park statue removed, and then I said that things were a bit more complicated and weirder. So here’s the rest of that story.
In February, 1929, Leonhard Seppala won the Eastern International Dog Derby, a race held that year in Quebec. Seppala was, to be clear, a very good dog sledder. He won a lot of races. This time was no different. What was different is what he said afterwards. Picking one paper as a representative, the Calgary Herald on February 25, 1929 went with the front-page headline “Alaska Serum ‘Race’ a Fake, Seppela Says: Famous Dash to Nome for Diphtheria Victims Merely ‘Hokum,’ Musher Claims.”
(They spell Seppala “Seppela” in the headline. They also spell Leonhard “Frank.” The news, man, I’m telling you…)
The dramatic story of the happening that had intrigued the interest of the entire continent was a fake, pure and simple, Seppala declared. It was a fake fabricated by a number of American newspapermen who were looking for drama rather than facts. The thousands of people who had contributed money to erect a monument to the dog Balto, which they believed had led the team which carried the serum, were the victims of a gigantic hoax, he said […] Seppala made these disclosures before an audience of Canadians and Americans which attended the mushers’ banquet at the Chateau Frontenac hotel to celebrate the close of the dog derby Saturday night.
Seppala himself brought the serum to Nome, he said, and there was nothing spectacular about the feat. Newspapermen who had been waiting in Nome to cover the story of the journey and the arrival of the serum had framed the whole episode as it was presented in the newspapers.
It then goes on to explain that Kaasen’s lead dog was named Foxy, whose name “lacked an element of romance,” as did alternate lead dog Joe. And then, Seppala is quoted as saying, of Balto:
“That was a name that smacked of the north and that was the name chosen to fool the newspaper reading public. Balto is today a martyr and a hero, though he was never better than a scrub dog, worth no more than $10 to anyone. The dog which toured American and Canadian vaudeville houses to receive the acclaim of thousands was not Balto, but a dog which had been picked up in Nome by Gunner Kasson because of his picturesque appearance.”
And: wow, right? This is not just an Alternative Theory, this is full-on Balto trutherism we’re getting here. Not only was Balto not the hero of Nome—just some asshole you wouldn’t even bother kicking, he was so useless—Balto wasn’t even Balto. Everything we know is a lie, even more than… than the everything we knew was a lie earlier.
Before we go too far, I would like to note a few things about this.
One: As I said previously, “this whole thing was a hoax, and also, my dog was the hero of it” is not an argument entirely devoid of problems. Two: This was reported in other newspapers at the time, but I assume—per usual—that they’re all relying on one original source, so it’s possible that this hoax reveal is, itself, a hoax! Or maybe just ol’ Sepp BSing for fun amongst friends, not knowing a reporter was listening in. Three, however: other elements of it, like “Balto wasn’t really the lead dog, but he had a nice-sounding name,” have become canon in Balto Revisionism, although they also come from Leonhard “Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Diphtheria Antitoxin” Seppala.
…Who was, again, a really good musher! Who had really good dogs! As far as I can tell, during this time period Seppala was dogsledding, and pretty close to the authority on it. Think of him like, say, Gary Kasparov or Bobby Fischer. Now think of how weird chess grandmasters can get. Now remember that Seppala was a dog breeder actively invested in creating what we now think of as Siberian Huskies and making them the dominant* sledding dog, that he sold dogs, that he sold Togo’s puppies specifically, and you have the basis for why I don’t think Sepp should be taken at his word here.
* Don’t worry I won’t accuse huskies of being dominant again.
Anyway, this story—such as it was, true or false; it didn’t brook a scandal in the sport or anything—basically died down at this point, up until 1931, when Seppala’s name is invoked in a resolution about taking the statue in Central Park down. The resolution quotes him, says the statue was intended “to gain publicity for a serum manufacturer,” declares “the inscription on the statue and the message is untrue,” and finally ends:
RESOLVED, That the Vaccination Research Association, as citizens and taxpayers, vigorously protest to your honor, as the elected guardian of our city and its people, against the continuance of this gross misrepresentation, and we appeal to you for the removal of the statue, which memoralizes a fraud and a mockery and is an imposition upon the credulity of the public.
Vaccination Research Association
Louis S. Siegfried, Chairman of Board of Directors.
…Actually the paper prints it as “Vinccination Research Association, Louis S. Siegried, Chariman of Board of Directors,” but you get the point.
You do get the point, right? Right? You are getting the same “oh, no” feeling I am. Right? What is the Vinccination Research Association, anyway? Who is the chariman? It’s decades before an animated Kevin Bacon/Bridget Fonda movie, so surely it can’t just be someone trying to deny the Complicated Feelings evoked in him by a husband-material wolfdog. So presumably the VRA is a group of doctors, scandalized that such misinformation might lead citizens to make poor decisions about their choi—
Aaaaaanyway three weeks later Siegfried was speaking at a “mass meeting” to protest the suspension of two high school students who were suspended for not being immunized. In the article about it (“Vaccination Protest to be Aired Tonight,” the Nov. 19, 1931 Hackensack Record), the school points out that one of those students has since received a medical exemption. Louis Siegfried is not only president of the Vaccination Research Association, it transpires, he is also director of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Society of New Jersey.
Weird!
A year later, in 1932, he was fulminating against the BCG tuberculosis vaccine. Back in 1929, Louis Siegfried spoke alongside a naturopath and the Voters and Taxpayers Committee, saying: “We must face the realization that we are in the throes of a medical inquisition,” that inquisition being diphtheria vaccination, a practice his naturopath buddy Wolf Adler ascribed to the “autocratic organization” of the medical industry having its ways with the “99 percent of the population” they see as “savages [who] practice barbarism.” (“Doctors Flayed at Rally Against Toxin-Antitoxin, the May 15, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle)
Six months earlier, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle quotes him as saying “vaccination is a menace to health” that “[fails] to render a person immune from smallpox, diphtheria, etc.” But I’m actually just here for the real pull quote from that story:
Dr. Siegfried, in his own words, is an alumnus of Raymond Street Jail.
It seems somewhat difficult to believe today, but back before information was widely accessible to people, vaccination against disease was not always necessarily popular. The UK, for example, had watched as diphtheria vaccines dropped mortality from 785/100,000 New Yorkers in 1894 to less than 1/100,000 by 1940.
Needless to say, the British public strongly resisted such an imposition on their right to childhood mortality—it was not until the despotic powers accorded by World War Two allowed the health service to mandate immunization that it became widespread. A third of all children in England and Wales, and half in Scotland, had been vaccinated by the end of 1942. By 1949, childhood deaths had fallen from prewar levels of over 40,000 per year to under a hundred.
An op-ed by one “H. Nowell” in the May 7th, 1929 edition of the Vancouver Sun—well before the statue resolution, by the way—says the quiet part out loud, and brings us back to Mr. Good Boy himself. It is headlined: “No limit, he says, to propaganda put out to encourage use of serums.”
The dog “Balto” which was supposed to lead the team which made the terrific dash with the serum was supposed to make a tour of the vaudeville houses and a statue was erected to the dog in New York City. It will no doubt interest your readers to learn the following facts exposing the above story as a gigantic fake…
[a lengthy verbatim excerpt from the same 1929 article I quoted earlier]
So reads the story. And now we know a little more of the press-agenting stunts to put across serums and vaccines. No wonder the public are beginning to demand that doctors and nurses in our schools be asked to leave our healthy children alone.
I am reasonably certain that Seppala did not intend this outcome—he was a participant in the serum run, too, remember. In tours elsewhere he talks about the serum run and seems content to see Togo lionized for his role in it. He pins the hoax on newspapermen, not on pharmaceutical companies. The most plausible take, I think, is that Seppala meant that the press overplayed what had happened for dramatic effect, and in doing so were willing to ignore certain facts about the serum run—it doesn’t seem like he thought he was being taken advantage of, obviously.
And, equally obviously, the statue didn’t come down, because by 1931 Americans were already well on their way to not taking anti-vaxxers seriously ever again.
So what can we learn from this?
- A serum run definitely happened in late January/early February, 1925, although it was probably mostly spectacle
- That spectacle was in the service of a couple of important things, vaccination and expanded public services
- Dogs named Togo and Balto were involved, as were their mushers, Leonhard Seppala and Gunnar Kaasen
- The “truth” of the serum run is not the 1995 movie…
- …But you’re not hearing the truth out of Leonhard Seppala’s mouth any more than you’re hearing it out of Kevin Bacon’s devilishly handsome muzzle.
Maybedon’t listen to “doctors” whose qualifications are “hates vaccines and has an Association to prove it” and “did time.”Maybeget vaccinated against preventable diseases if you can.- Dogs are great, aren’t they?