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Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and American Efficiency, 1890–1924

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Alan M. Kraut
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Extract

In a 1902 North American Review article, United States Commissioner General of Immigration Terence Powderly called for stricter health controls on arriving aliens. Powderly cautioned that unless “proper precautions” were taken to detect two contagious diseases—trachoma, an eye infection, and favus, a dermatological disease of the scalp—the future American might be “hairless and sightless.” He called upon Americans to refuse to allow their country to become “the hospital of the nations of the earth” (Powderly, 1902).

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , Winter 1988 , pp. 377 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1988 

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