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Minnesota health officials are continuing to brace for potential Ebola cases in the state. 


It's expected that the response to any outbreak would be the same in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.


But that wasn't the case in 1924 when a smallpox epidemic hit the Twin Cities.


MPR News' Cathy Wurzer spoke with Dominique Tobbel, a history of medicine professor at the University of Minnesota about that outbreak. 

Four hundred people died in the Twin Cities during that outbreak -- 90 percent of them lived in Minneapolis, according the 


Tobbel said as smallpox spread across the metro that year, the two cities took remarkably different tactics against the disease.

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Cathy Wurzer

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Cathy Wurzer talks with a history of medicine professor about the smallpox outbreak of 1924.

Minnesota health officials are continuing to brace for potential Ebola cases in the state.  It's expected that the response to any outbreak would be the same in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.   But that wasn't the case in 1924 when a smallpox epidemic hit the Twin Cities.  MPR News' Cathy Wurzer spoke with Dominique Tobbel, a history of medicine professor at the University of Minnesota about that outbreak.

How the Twin Cities handled smallpox in 1924

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