Quarantine!

Howard Markel

In 1892, a record-breaking year for immigration to the United States, New York City was struck by two devastating epidemics: typhus fever and cholera. The typhus epidemic was traced to one particular boat carrying East European Jews, but the cholera epidemic was more widespread, prompting President Benjamin Harrison to temporarily halt immigration. In response, local and national health authorities specifically targeted the immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe, ordering them removed not only from incoming ships but also from their new homes in New York and dispatching them to nearby quarantine islands where "coffin corner" awaited those who succumbed. In Quarantine! Howard Markel traces the course of these two epidemics, day by day, from the point of view of those involved - the public health doctors who diagnosed and treated the victims, the newspaper reporters who covered the...

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