There has been some agitation among the city authoriyies during the past week as to what would happen if a tramp who has been confined in the city jail should become ill with smallpox as was recently the case in the Ann Arbor jail. How would he be cared for and where? The city has no detention hospital and no pest house fit to keep a person in. What would become of him and how could he be isolated from the public to precent the spread of the dread disease? Mayor Towner stated to a Press representative today that he had given notice to the Board of Health that something definite must be done in the near future to provide for such an emergency.
One plan that has been suggested is that a portable pest house should be purchased by the city and placed on the property near the Water Works station. Three portable houses may be purchased of a firm in the northern part of the state at a reasonable figure. One or more rooms could be purchased just as desirable. These houses are strong and warmly built and are put together with staples.
A meeting of the Board of Health and the Council will probably be held very soon to discuss the advisability of such a purchase.
----Ypsilanti Daily Press, January 24, 1911
Actually, I constructed a bit of a straw man here. The Water Works Station was pumping water from an underground well. It seems unlikely that it would be contaminated.
ReplyDeleteNow, if there was also a public water pump that everyone shared, including someone ill, then one is reminded of the great cholera scare, and its diagnosis, of 1854.
Hmmm.....what about the Starkweather Fountain? I wonder if a factor in its roughly 1940 disappearance was due to health concerns? Points to ponder.