September 20, 1769

Commandant Alexandre de Clouet reported that everybody at Arkansas Post had come down with a fever as a result of high water; archaeologist Samuel Dorris Dickinson surmises that this might have been an early instance of typhoid in Arkansas, from the fact that the settlement’s drinking water was polluted. Typhoid is among the earliest diseases reported in Arkansas and was a significant public health problem up through the early twentieth century. Though it became less common in the modern era, typhoid had a significant impact upon state health in times and places where poor sanitation was the norm.