SUPPLEMENT


the later routine carriage of drugs and vaccines by air. The idea of medicines taking to the skies was not entirely new


in 1925. During the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, there are scattered reports of aircraft being employed to deliver medical supplies to communities cut off by snow or poor infrastructure. The Spanish flu, which killed tens of millions worldwide, created urgency on a scale previously unknown. Governments, military authorities and local health officials tried every means available to hasten delivery of vaccines, antitoxins and palliatives. In the United States, for instance, Army Air Service pilots made flights carrying vaccines and other medical goods to rural posts. In Canada and parts of Europe too, small aircraft were sometimes called upon for emergency transport. These early flights are hard to document with precision, not least because they were often improvised and reported only briefly in local newspapers, but they represent the earliest known instances of pharmaceuticals being flown by air.


Moments of desperation Compared to those tentative experiments, the Serum Run demonstrated both the allure and the limitations of aviation in 1925. In theory, an aeroplane could have carried the entire supply of serum from Nenana to Nome in a matter of hours. In practice, with temperatures so low that even the sled drivers suffered frostbite, the risk of an engine seizing mid-flight was intolerably high. Wooden struts could snap in the cold, lubricants would thicken, and visibility could vanish in minutes. Against such odds, the sturdy reliability of sled dogs won the day. The final handover of the serum to Nome’s Dr Curtis Welch was made not from an aircraft’s cargo hold but from the frostbitten hand of a musher.


Yet, the presence of the aircraft lingered in memory. Within just a


few years, more powerful and weather-resistant bush planes began to prove themselves in Alaska. By the 1930s, pilots such as Noel Wien were flying medicines, mail and passengers regularly across terrain once thought impassable. What was a missed opportunity in 1925 soon became routine practice,


reshaping healthcare in


remote communities. It is fair to say that the Serum Run, though accomplished on the ground, helped plant in public consciousness the notion that in future an aircraft could be as vital a courier of medicine as any train or sled. The broader picture is that both the Spanish flu and the Nome


crisis showed how aviation intersected with medicine at moments of desperation. The pandemic had revealed, in scattered fashion, that air


transport could shorten delivery times when no other


route sufficed. Nome demonstrated the idea again, even if only as a plan shelved in favour of tradition. Taken together, they chart the uncertain dawn of medical air transport: one marked by brave improvisation, technological shortfall, and the constant tension between promise and practicality. Today, the concept of flying pharmaceuticals is so familiar as to


be unremarkable. Vaccines, blood, and medical equipment move daily by jet and by helicopter. In remote parts of Africa, drones now ferry blood products across rivers and mountains. In such a world, it is easy to forget that less than a century ago, the choice lay between an experimental aircraft with a frozen engine and a team of dogs straining against the wind. The 1925 Serum Run therefore stands not only as a tribute to the dogs but as a reminder of aviation’s early struggles to claim its place in the fight against disease.


“Today, the


concept of flying pharmaceuticals is so familiar as to be


unremarkable.


Vaccines, blood, and medical


equipment move daily by jet and by helicopter.”


17


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