Category: Health
Don’t Poison Baby
At the beginning of the twentieth century, exhausted parents could purchase “soothing syrups,” cordials, and drops intended to quiet a crying baby or help a…
Mob Tried to Burn Down New Jersey Pesthouse as Firefighters Fought Back
Orange, New Jersey, had barely finished building its new pesthouse when an angry crowd tried to burn it down. The small hospital, meant to isolate…
Smallpox Patients Refused the Pesthouse as New Cases Spread
Another smallpox case had appeared, and with it came the difficult question of where the sick should be kept. Miss Mamie Halligan, a domestic in…
Omaha Mob Burned the Pesthouse, and Officials Wanted Arrests
Omaha officials had a rather serious problem in January 1901. The city needed a pesthouse, but someone had burned it down. The smallpox isolation building…
Armed Guards Sealed Off Virginia Smallpox Region
Armed guards once surrounded a small mountain region of Virginia to keep smallpox from escaping. In February 1900, the Denmark area near the headwaters of…
New Rochelle Farmers Threatened to Burn Pesthouse Built for Smallpox Patients
The fight over a pesthouse in New Rochelle had turned into something close to open rebellion. In the Jerusalem Woods north of the city, health…
Yale Medical Student Trapped in Pesthouse After Volunteering to Treat Smallpox Patient
When smallpox appeared in Derby, Connecticut, fear spread almost as quickly as the disease. C.P. Cook was taken to the town pesthouse, isolated from everyone…
Nebraska Butcher Accused of Picking His Teeth Before Handling Meat
In 1923, one southeastern Nebraska housewife had seen enough. The village butcher, she claimed, had habits that were not merely unpleasant, but downright alarming for…
Man Visits Sick Wife at Hospital, Gets Mistaken for Lunatic and Locked Up
Albert Smith went to the hospital expecting to visit his sick wife. Instead, he was greeted like a man everyone had been waiting for. The…
Doctor Said a Plumber’s $21 Tool Worked Best for Burning Out Cancer
In 1924, a Johns Hopkins surgeon startled listeners in Atlantic City with the unlikely claim that one of the best tools for cauterizing cancerous growths…
