AIR CARG O WEEK


PHARMA THE TAIL END


AIRCRAFT IN THE 1925 SERUM RUN TO NOME


A CHAPTER IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF MEDICINES BY AIR W


hen the 1925 Serum Run to Nome is recalled, they almost always think of sled dogs cutting across frozen Alaskan wilderness, braving temperatures that plunged below minus 40 degrees, with teams led by men such as Leonhard Seppala and Gunnar


Kaasen. The tale is remembered as one of huskies and their drivers racing through ice and darkness to save a community from diphtheria. What is less well remembered is that aircraft were also considered as a means of delivering the lifesaving antitoxin. Though ultimately sidelined by circumstance, the aircraft’s role in that episode stands at a curious intersection in the history of pharmaceuticals in flight, linking the daring improvisations of the


Spanish flu years with later, more reliable medical airlifts. By the early 1920s, aviation was still very young. The Great War


had accelerated development of aircraft, turning them from fragile novelties into machines capable of carrying weight and weathering modest distances. Yet they remained notoriously unreliable. Engines often froze, wings iced


up and wooden structures strained


against rough landings. Still, the potential was obvious: in a land as vast and inhospitable as Alaska, the thought of using an aircraft to cut days from a journey held real promise. When word spread in


January 1925 that Nome faced a


diphtheria outbreak, officials


in Alaska and Washington knew time was of the essence. The nearest supply of antitoxin lay hundreds of miles away in Anchorage. By train it could be brought as far as Nenana, but the last leg of some 674 miles remained perilous. The governor of Alaska, Scott Bone, considered all options, and among them was air transport. Two biplanes belonging to the Alaska Railroad’s aviation section, both ageing Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” aircraft left over from wartime training, were standing by. These machines, designed nearly a decade earlier, were open-cockpit,


fabric-covered


and ill-suited to the brutal Alaskan winter. They had neither


heated cabins nor


reliable means to prevent engines freezing. To send them out into storms that grounded even hardy bush pilots seemed reckless. In the end, authorities decided to rely on dog sled relays, a system with deep roots in Alaska and proven resilience in subzero conditions. Thus the planes were left unused, their presence reduced to a


footnote in the famous relay. Yet the mere fact they were considered is significant. It speaks to a growing awareness that aviation could, in time, serve as a lifeline for pharmaceuticals. That moment in Nome marked a bridge between hesitant early experiments and


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