December 2010
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X-ray screening for tuberculosis in Seattle
January 1960
Image courtesy Public Health - Seattle & King County
Public health nurse with mother and children
c. 1951
Image courtesy Public Health - Seattle & King County
The People's Free Dispensary, Portland, Oregon
c.1920
Interior view of outpatient clinic in Portland, Oregon. One side of the room is filled with mothers and children awaiting their turn. A physician examines a young girl and a nurse records medical data. A baby is being weighed on the right.
Image courtesy US National Library of Medicine
Wayside Mission Hospital
1899-1907
Early Seattle had little or no emergency care for people who couldn’t pay. In 1899, the Seattle Benevolent Society bought the old side-wheel steamboat "Idaho" and set it up at the foot of Jackson Street as the Wayside Mission Hospital. The 41-bed emergency hospital treated people who couldn’t afford a doctor. The hospital moved ashore in 1907 and closed in 1909 when the city opened its own emergency hospital in the Public Safety Building.
Image courtesy Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Washington.
Man having chest x-ray
c. September 1948
From 1948-49, King County, the University of Washington, and the United States Public Health Service worked together to test everyone in King County for tuberculosis. The medical staff did chest x-rays and skin tests to find out who might have this very contagious lung disease. People with tuberculosis were sent to Firlands Sanatorium to be treated.
Image courtesy Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Washington.
Children being immunized against diphtheria
On February 1, 1940, Seattle's health commissioner announced a campaign to immunize the city's 6,000 elementary school children against diphtheria. A doctor and two nurses visited eight schools every week to give the children their shots. This photo shows a line of children getting their diphtheria shots at West Woodland School in Phinney Ridge on the first day of Seattle's immunization campaign.
Image courtesy Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Washington.
If you have historic public health photographs you would like to share, please e-mail Missie at missie@u.washington.edu. We would love to feature them.
Thank you for a wonderful year of "then & now" monthly postcards. We will be starting a new monthly e-postcard series in 2011 called "We are public health."
