By Kelly B.
As American families flocked to cities to find work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, crowding and a lack of clean water gave rise to diseases of epidemic proportions. Sewage was disposed of in outhouses and cesspools, which inevitably overflowed over time. Garbage was thrown out into the street. Horses, used for transportation, filled the streets with manure. Largely a product of the utter lack of sanitation, influenza, cholera (spread through contaminated drinking water), typhus, typhoid, polio and tuberculosis outbreaks raged through crowded cities.
Efforts towards public sanitation in the early 20th century greatly improved the health conditions of people living in cities. Community health nurses were invaluable in educating the public about the need for personal hygiene and sanitary environments, but sanitation was not the only health issue facing people in American cities. From wallpaper laced with arsenic to air pollution from copper mines, concerns over public health came to the forefront of the nation’s conscience.
Sources:
Environmental History Timeline. (1996). Retrieved on June 7, 2010 from
http://www.radford.edu/wkovarik/envhist/5progressive.html
City life at the turn of the 20th century. (2000). Eyewitness to History. Retrieved on June 7, 2010 from http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snpim2.htm
Contagion: Historical views of diseases and epidemics. (2010). Harvard University Public Library Open Collections Program. Retrieved on June 7, 2010 from
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion
Jones, J., Wood, P., Borstelmann, T., May E., & Ruiz, V. Created equal. (2008).
New York, NY: Pearson/Longman.
Photo retrieved from The National Archives website on June 9, 2010 from
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/records-list.html
