“Plague!”
Published under the pen name Rene Lafayette

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Publication date: April 1949

Original publication: Astounding Science Fiction

Genre: Science Fiction

Series: Ole Doc Methuselah

Story description: A spaceship, with an epidemic aboard, is ordered back into space, and ultimately lands on the third habitable planet of Sirius, communicating the “plague” to the local inhabitants. Ole Doc Methuselah saves the ship and its environs from being destroyed, and identifies the “plague” as an ancient—but totally unfamiliar—disease: measles.

Currently available in the book Ole Doc Methuselah.