DAVIDSON HISTORY

Robert Love, Davidson College Class of 1898. (photo courtesy of Davidson College Archives)

​On July 16, 1898 the Yorkville Enquirer reprinted an article from the Gastonia Gazette on a number of cases of typhoid fever that were contracted at Davidson’s commencement. Typhoid fever results from ingesting water or food that has been contaminated by the salmonella typhi bacteria, and is  extremely contagious.  According to the Enquirer, these particular cases resulted from the drinking water at one of the college boarding houses: “Messrs. Edgar and Robert Love and Misses Mamie Love and Mabel Smith were infected at Davidson commencement. Mr. Bernard Smith was at the same boarding house, but drank no water and has escaped infection. One young man died at Davidson from fever contracted at the same place…about a dozen other cases in South Carolina are said to be traceable to the same source of infection. We hear that Professor [Henry Louis] Smith, of Davidson, sent a jug of the water to Charlotte for analysis and it was found to contain the typhoid germ.”

Two weeks later, the Enquirer published an update, also taken from the Gazette: “The entire community feels a sympathetic interest in four cases of typhoid fever contracted at Davidson College commencement. The two young ladies, Miss Mable Smith and Miss Mamie Love, have safely pass [sic] the crisis of the disease and are fairly on the way to recovery. In the case of Messrs. Edgar and Robert the disease has been of a more desperate type. For several days both have been as dangerously ill, it seems, as they could be, and in neither case is it quite certain that the crisis is passed. Of the two, Mr. Robert Love is in the more critical condition. A trained nurse from Bay City, Michigan, now has this patient in charge, however, and when all the conditions are summed up there is a comforting hope, gratifying to us all, that he will soon show signs of improvement. There are four or five other cases of fever in town, one or two of them being very critical ones.” Robert and Edgar Love both survived, and followed their father, Grier, into the textile business.