Emily Morgan, RN is not widely known.

A Google search turns up a few comments about her role as the “diphtheria nurse” in the 1925 Nome, Alaska outbreak. The story of how dog teams raced lifesaving antitoxin to the ice-bound village - sledding over 1000 miles in five days - is legendary. It is still celebrated as the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. There is a statue of the lead dog in Central Park.

There is no statue of Emily Morgan.

A 1908 graduate of the Ensworth Nurses Training School in St. Joseph, Missouri, Emily was assigned to Nome as a visiting public health nurse by the Red Cross in 1923. She was 47.

No stranger to diphtheria, Emily survived her own bout with the disease prior to her assignment to Alaska. When the Nome epidemic began, it was Emily who was given the designation of “diphtheria nurse”, responsible for monitoring, medicating and providing nursing care to those affected.

In an interview shortly before her death in 1960, Emily talked of her experiences. The story of how the community mobilized to contain the deadly bacteria and the race to deliver the antitoxin makes for a compelling read, but the true impact of the epidemic is felt in Emily’s descriptions of her interactions with her patients.

• The little girl who would not take her shot until the family prayed with her and then didn’t even flinch, thanking Emily for helping to make her better.

• Walking one and one-half miles to visit a sick child laying on a pallet on the floor. Emily asked why the child was not in her bed. She learned that “no person was allowed to die on a bed where others would be obliged to sleep”. It was the Eskimo custom. Too sick for a full assessment, the child died the next morning.

• Finding a grieving father building a coffin for his child. No one would or could come to help him because of the red quarantine sign on the door, so Nurse Emily dropped to her hands and knees and got to work with a hammer. She then watched the father cart the child’s body away on a sled, to be buried in a snowbank because the ground was frozen.

• Watching a sick mother decline the last bit of antitoxin because there might be a child who needed it. She survived, albeit after a rocky course.

• Making a house call to the red-light district where women with names like “Fairbanks Kitty”, “Ever Ready” and “Fair and Square” plied their trade. Unbeknownst to Emily, the ladies-of-the-night also worked the day shift, as she accidentally discovered during her 11:00 am visit to “Georgia”.

Once the antitoxin arrived, the real work began. The serum had to be given to all who were infected or exposed. Forty children received the serum in one day, Emily traveling to each on foot.

Emily earned the gratitude of her patients and by the end of the outbreak had made friends with many of the families in the community, children and parents alike. Armed with nothing but a medical bag filled with a thermometer, tongue depressors, antitoxin tubes, a flashlight and candy for the kids (bribes!), she gave care to the sick, comfort to the dying and grieving and relief from the fear of infection to those in her care.

Emily Morgan, RN, said the real heroes were the men and dogs who risked their lives; that she was just “the privileged instrument in the hands of fate”.

I’m sure her patients saw her as much, much more.

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(Emily’s “uniform” consisted of woolen underwear, a woolen dress, heavy sweater, and two pairs of woolen hose, all covered by a fur parka and high-top mukluks. Think of that the next time you complain that your scrubs are riding up!)

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Reference: Offen, C. M. (1974, April). Angel of the Yukon. True West, 21, 20.