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."