Once Upon a Time: Coming to Ellis Island
What can we learn from the contagious + infectious disease hospital today?
Ellis Island: the boats, the great hall, the luggage, the photographs.
Plus a hospital complex that treated more than a million patients, had four female physicians at a time when American women couldn’t vote, and was modeled on Florence Nightingale’s vision of sanitary and humane healthcare.
The complex included an infectious disease hospital recently opened for behind-the-scenes tours. I took that tour a few weeks ago and can’t stop thinking about it.
First, some facts.
12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island from the 1890s through 1954.
Peak years were 1905 to 1914, when up to one million hopeful new Americans per year came through. At that time, your trip would have been fine if you were rich. If you weren’t, it was crammed and dark and uncomfortable beyond what our bodies can imagine.
Today, the hall where they waited to be processed is shiny and freshly painted, with black-and-white photos of the waiting immigrants — exhausted, some wearing more than one layer of clothing — all around.
Here, immigration officials checked documents, and also screened for illness and mental ability.
The sick were taken to the hospital complex, which included 15+ buildings by 1911. One of those was the infectious and contagious disease hospital, located on the island’s western-most edge.
Our tour group is led by one of four paid National Park Service guides. She hands us hard hats and says to make sure they’re on tight, and to watch our step. The grounds are soggy from a recent storm. The entire island was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, and the tours are part of a renovation process begun afterward.
The sprawling red brick building—though abandoned for decades and only recently re-opened—is a marvel: tall ceilings and huge windows that remained open year-round for a “fresh air and sunshine” cure-all. Some rooms had heated floors; others look out onto small rounded courtyard gardens. There’s an intricate system of doors and locks in case of a possible epidemic; there’s a massive furnace that sterilized multiple mattresses at once. There’s also a morgue with theatre-style seating where eminent NYC physicians came to teach and learn.
The main hospital treated everything from broken limbs to psychoses. The infectious disease hospital was limited to just that, with tuberculosis and measles as the top two diagnoses. Our tour guide shows us a room that once housed TB patients. It looks out onto the Statue of Liberty, and she tells us how sad she always feels here — back then, TB was a death sentence.
The hospital complex treated 1.2 million patients in total, with 3,500 deaths. That’s a .03% mortality rate and low by any standards, but even more so back then, before penicillin and antibiotics and all those modern medical marvels. Our tour guide says that New Yorkers would often try to get themselves admitted into the Ellis Island hospitals, but weren’t allowed: immigrants only.
We also learn that the infectious disease hospital had four female physicians in the 1910s (the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920).
We stand in one of the administrative rooms where nurses kept patient records.
“A memo was issued every couple weeks in this hospital,” our tour guide says, “admonishing the doctors and nurses not to hug their patients.” She explains: patients were hospitalized for weeks or months at a time. And their health care extended beyond routine. Friendships were formed; hugs were exchanged.
Let’s dissect that: these immigrants had come across the ocean from far away lands. They didn’t speak English. They were sick. They had little to nothing in terms of possessions. And they were treated by skilled medical staff that included women; fed healthy meals cooked daily in a huge kitchen with fresh ingredients; had sunshine and gardens and water to look out onto; and they were hugged. The beauty of it all? No medical staff ever got sick in that infectious disease hospital.
Forty percent of Americans trace their heritage through the island. Which means that four percent of Americans had family that was treated in that hospital complex.
Who were they? Are any of them still alive? Did they share their stories with their children and grandchildren? And what other stories does that hospital hold?
I aim to find out. Because there are so many stories waiting to be told just about that infections disease hospital, let alone the entire hospital complex.
And as the issue of immigration continues to be debated across America — from the White House to local town halls to dinner tables and bars — it’s a great time to look back, and look across the Hudson River to that Statue gazing down on it all, lifting her lamp beside America’s golden door.
“A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.”
— Emma Lazarus
