The Extraordinary Dr. Geiger

When the pandemic flu of 1918 clobbered Arkansas, the U.S. Public Health Service officer in charge was Dr. Jacob Casson Geiger. He had arrived in 1917 with a different assignment: improving sanitation in towns around the Army cantonment that would become Camp Pike. In North Little Rock, Geiger forced sewer and water main construction, took businesses to court over filthy alleys, shuttered dirty restaurants, fought mosquitoes, closed tainted wells, vaccinated kids, secured water service for Levy and insisted that the black high school be given water and sewer service, at once. Clippings from the Arkansas Democrat and Arkansas Gazette show a bit of what he accomplished in his first months.