![]() ![]() Three out of four of its victims were left blind. ![]() Yet in the days before such medical miracles, trachoma was a chronic, scarring, and smoldering ordeal. A chronic infection of the eye, trachoma is now easily treated with a single dose of an antibiotic. Public Health Service doctor whose every word and action had the potential to instantly change their lives for the better or the worse.”īut it was the last examination that was the most feared: the doctor’s inspections of the eyelids and eyes for evidence of trachoma. “Most of all, every immigrant feared the uniformed U.S. Those who appeared “odd” or who could not follow directions (not a rare occasion given relatively few of these travelers spoke fluent or any English) were scrutinized for mental acuity and evidence of “psychopathic” tendencies. A sharp-eyed doctor would then inspect their nails, skin and scalp for fungal infections including the stubborn ringworm. Elsewhere, a stethoscope was placed on their chests to listen to their hearts and lungs. At another point, their vision was tested. Afterward, immigrants were instructed to turn at right angles so another physician could inspect both sides of their face for symmetry or defects, and the next for evidence of goiter. As the immigrants carried their suitcases and trunks across the Great Hall, another physician was watching them closely to detect abnormalities in posture, muscular weakness, or a lame gait. This was hardly the end of their endurance test. Those who had to stop in the middle of this path, clutching their chests in pain or resting because they were short of breath, were pulled aside to be inspected for evidence of chronic heart disease, such as atherosclerosis or damage from a long-ago bout of rheumatic fever, or lung problems. After disembarking from the ferry that transported them from the steamships, they were told to carry their bags into the main building and up a long flight of steps. The medical inspection at Ellis Island began soon after the immigrants walked onto the island. This was taken sometime between Jand July 3, 1912. View of the Great Hall of Ellis Island Immigration Station in New York. Hurd, the superintendent of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, worried aloud, “how can a physician inspect 2,000 persons as they should be in a couple of hours, when it sometimes takes a doctor twice that long to diagnose one patient?” After hearing the details of this complex operation, Dr. In 1916, there were 25 physicians and four inspection lines were running simultaneously. By 1902, there were eight physicians examining more than 500,000 arrivals by 1905, 16 doctors examined 900,000 immigrants. When Ellis Island opened its doors in 1892, there were six physicians stationed to inspect the more than 200,000 immigrants who streamed through that year. Roughly 75 percent of them entered through New York Bay and were processed at Ellis Island. ![]() Public Health Service at Ellis Island.īetween 18, approximately 21,000,000 immigrants arrived in America. But if one is tempted to consider these protocols too invasive or arduous, it might serve well to think of the tasks undertaken by their predecessors: the doctors of the U.S. Immigrants in the Waiting Room at Ellis Island, circa 1900.On October 8, 2014, after the recent death of Thomas Eric Duncan, Ebola’s first casualty on American soil, President Obama and the CDC ordered a series of examinations, questionnaires, and temperature checks for travelers arriving from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. But so much more is missing from this curated and archived scene: the warren of cage-like fences, the rows and rows of benches filled to capacity with immigrants from all around the globe, and, of course, the clamorous din they produced. There was even a tiny courtroom where special hearings were held to decide a newcomer’s fate. Those deemed ill were confined to the Contagious Disease hospital, right next door - which after decades of neglect has been recently re-opened to the public. The more inquiring visitor may visit rooms off to the side where immigrants suspected of having an illness were subjected to intense medical scrutiny. When tourists enter its Great Hall they can still see the large American flag hanging on the northern wall and, across the enormous chamber, the tall clerks’ desks where thousands of passports were stamped daily, each with an echoing and resounding force. Noise is resoundingly absent at Ellis Island today. 15, 1966 marked the day that Ellis Island (along with Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty) was officially listed on the U.S. ![]()
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