Public Health Initiatives
Federal, state, and local bodies of government started to combat tuberculosis in the late nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries through constructing and designating isolated spaces for the tuberculous, enacting legislation, and providing education.
Isolated spaces for the tuberculous: Sanatoriums, Hospital Departments, Tuberculosis Pavilions
Many states, local tuberculosis associations, and private organizations appropriated funds for the construction of private and municipal sanatoriums for the specific treatment of the contagion. Hospitals also constructed separate departments and buildings for the tuberculous, as well as isolated pavilions for the poor and "colored." These separated buildings served both the tuberculous patients by providing medical care, as well as the unaffected population by segregating them from those infected. Later, states and private organizations would construct preventoriums for children. These buildings housed children, not necessarily infected with tuberculosis, but who had tuberculous families, in order to prevent the spread of the disease. [1]
Legislation: Anti-expectoration laws
Most states enacted laws against spitting and required copies of the law to be posted throughout the area in most public spaces. Since the public generally knew about germ theory and how tuberculosis could spread from one person to another, states passed laws against spitting and often required a consumptive's sputum to be properly disposed of by burning. States and cities occasionally dictated the amount of sputum receptacles, called spittoons, that were added to trains and urban store fronts. [2]
Education: Tuberculosis literature, exhibits, and lectures
Most anti-tuberculosis associations distributed circulars and bulletins educating school children and the general public about disease prevention. Public schools featured exhibits on tuberculosis and proper hygiene, and many physicians traveled around cities and states to give lectures on the disease. [3]
1. Connolly, Cynthia, "Child-saving in the United States," in Saving Sickly Children. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 1-25.
2. Abrams, Jeanne, "'Spitting is Dangerous, Indecent, and against the Law!' Legislating Health Behavior during the American Tuberculosis Crusade," in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 68, no. 3 (2013): 416-450.
3. Virginia Health Bulletin 10 (1910), 67, 69, 71, 75.
2. Abrams, Jeanne, "'Spitting is Dangerous, Indecent, and against the Law!' Legislating Health Behavior during the American Tuberculosis Crusade," in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 68, no. 3 (2013): 416-450.
3. Virginia Health Bulletin 10 (1910), 67, 69, 71, 75.