Immigrant Health, Health Services, and History University Module
Class
About this Module
Class 1: Immigration and Health in the Ellis Island Era
Introduction:
This class focuses on the era of the New Immigration (1890–1924), when 20 million people came to the United States. Suggested readings and online resources depict medical inspection of arriving immigrants, and conditions of immigrant life in U.S. cities. Students will learn that the federal government devoted significant resources to medical inspection of immigrants on arrival, but not to medical care or public health in immigrant communities.
Class Resources
Readings
- “19th century political cartoon blaming immigrants for cholera” illustration. The Migrationist (blog). October 22, 2014. https://themigrationist.net/2014/10/22/politicizing-fear-modern-nativism-in-the-time-of-ebola/.
- National Library of Medicine. Medical inspection and quarantine photos in Outside / Inside: Exhibition Collection.
- “Immigrant Inspection Service,” W.A. Rogers, Harper’s Weekly, February 10, 1883
- An immigrant held in medical quarantine detention on Ellis Island, New York, ca. 1930
- Inspection of hair for lice at Ellis Island Immigration Station, New York, early 20th century
- A female immigrant piecing together a wooden puzzle as part of an examination, early 20th century
- Detention pen at the Ellis Island immigration station, New York, 1902
- Kraut, Alan M. “Plagues and Prejudices: Nativism’s Construction of Disease in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century New York City.” In Hives of Sickness: Public Health and Epidemics in New York City. Edited by David Rosner. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
- “Exploring 97 Orchard Street.” Tenement Museum. http://tenement.org/research.html.
- “In the Day’s Work of the Settlement Nurse.” In Charities and the Commons, April 7, 1906, 41–44. https://ia801601.us.archive.org/1/items/charitiescommons1619char/charitiescommons1619char.pdf.
Discussion Questions
- Look at the 19th-century cartoon of the immigrant ship. What message do you think the cartoon was meant to send? How do you think such images affected people’s views of immigration and immigrant health?
- Look at the photos of immigrant medical inspection and quarantine from the National Library of Medicine. Note down some of your impressions. How are immigrants portrayed in the photographs? What do these images tell us about the relationship between medicine and immigration policy?
- According to Alan M. Kraut’s article “Plagues and Prejudices,” how effective was medical inspection of immigrants in preventing the spread of disease? Were inspection procedures based more on science (e.g., the germ theory), or on prejudices against immigrants? Provide some examples.
- Using “Exploring 97 Orchard Street,” describe a typical tenement apartment. How might tenement living have affected residents’ health?
- What immigrant groups are represented in the “In the Day’s Work” article? What kinds of living conditions did the nurses observe? What types of illnesses and disorders did they treat? Why was tuberculosis (consumption) a particularly devastating disease?
- Why did the U.S. government focus on screening immigrants for medical problems on entry, but not on caring for their health problems afterward? What does this tell us about the role of government in public health during this time?
