On Thursday, March 2, 1905, a young man from St. Louis found solace from the freezing weather that had gripped the nation’s capital in a local Turkish bath. The bath did not have its intended warming effects, but rather, he found himself seized by “severe chills,” enough that the attendants raised the alarm and had […]
When we last looked at the smallpox hospital in Reservation 13, the job of designing it had been transferred from an accused felon to a local draftsman. A few months later, the contract to build the hospital was given to Columbus Thomas of C. Thomas & Son. There were some delays in the project, partly […]
A few months ago, I began to write about the smallpox hospitals in Reservation 13. After writing about two of them, I found myself distracted by other shiny objects and failed to look into the third structure built there for this purpose. I was advised of this recently by a reader, and so here is […]
Smallpox is, thankfully, no longer an issue today. With two strains deep-frozen in freezers in Moscow and Atlanta, we do not have to worry about a disease that kills 30% of all afflicted any more. Even in 19th Century Washington, it was no longer the death-bringer it had been, as vaccines had been developed even before […]