[citation needed] On admission to Willard Parker, the differential diagnosis was drug reaction (since Le Bar had reported taking proprietary headache powders and aspirin), erythema multiforme, Kaposi's varicelliform eruption, and smallpox.
The next concern for the health department was tracking down Le Bar's contacts, including everybody who stayed at the hotel at the same time he did.
All of Le Bar's contacts in New York City, which numbered several hundred, were vaccinated and sequestered to prevent further spread of the illness.
[9] A 4-year-old boy being treated for whooping cough at Willard Parker Hospital was discharged on March 10, the day Eugene Le Bar died.
He was transferred to Cardinal Hayes Convalescent Home for Children, a Catholic nursing facility in Millbrook, New York.
[citation needed] A 2+1⁄2-year-old boy admitted to Willard Parker Hospital for treatment of whooping cough just prior to Le Bar's death also came down with smallpox and was diagnosed on March 17.
In addition, Carmen Acosta—Ishmael Acosta's wife—was admitted to Willard Parker Hospital on April 6 with a rash and fever, and was diagnosed with smallpox a day later.
[citation needed] Eugene Le Bar's wife was contacted in Maine, where she had returned after her husband's death.
Volunteers drawn from the American Red Cross, the City Health Department, off-duty police and firefighters, and the disbanded, but vast, World War II Air Raid Warden networks located in all of New York's coastal towns, went door-to-door to urge residents to get vaccinated.
However, brain tissue was examined from all 8 fatalities, and in a report on the outbreak written by Commissioner of Health Weinstein, he stated that they had other diseases of the central nervous system and none had encephalitis.
Even President Harry S. Truman received a vaccination for a brief trip to give a speech in New York City to news reporters.
[17] There were two additional cases of smallpox transmitted in the New York City area at that same time—a merchant seaman who had temporarily lived with relatives in Manhattan from March 4 to 15, and R.C.
[18] New York Yankees pitcher Bill Bevens became ill from his vaccination and had to miss his scheduled start on April 29, 1947.
[19] Bronx resident Sylvia Steinberg posed as a nurse representing a hospital and vaccinated about 500 people with water over three days.
[20] She pleaded guilty to unlawful practice of medicine, assault, and illegal possession of a hypodermic needle, and was sentenced to six months in jail.
[21] The events associated with the smallpox outbreak were dramatized in the Columbia Pictures movie The Killer That Stalked New York, released in 1950.
These events were also dramatized in the 1950 Radio show "Science Magazine of the Air" in episode #134 entitled "The Bell's Toll.