Science Art: A quarantine safeguards health…, 1936.

21 March 2021 grant Featured, Science Art 0

Scientific illustration of a mother and child outside a home; the child is pointing to a red "quarantine" notice.
Scientific illustration of a mother and child outside a home; the child is pointing to a red "quarantine" notice.

Scientific illustration of a mother and child outside a home; the child is pointing to a red "quarantine" notice.Click to embiggen

This is how public health was handled in the days before a lot of diseases were considered “eradicated.” It’s from The Body and Health: Grade Six by Ruby M. Simpson, a school book for Canadian children, which I found on archive.org.

I try to keep my pandemic-related posting to a minimum – I figure there’s enough of that elsewhere in the media right now – but today, my son started coughing and has a sore throat. Oh, great.

This textbook explains what a real quarantine is like:

Obey the Rules of Quarantine for Communicable Diseases:
There are some diseases which spread easily from person to person, like smallpox, measles, chickenpox, diphtheria, mumps, scarlet fever, and whooping cough. In order to help prevent their spread, a quarantine is established and enforced by law. The person who is quarantined is not permitted to leave the house until the danger of spreading the disease has passed. Other members of the family also may be required to remain within the house or directed to take other precautions to keep from spreading the disease. When a quarantine is set up, a notice is posted on the house, stating the name of the disease and directing others to keep away until the danger has passed.

Obey strictly the rules of quarantine. Do all you can to prevent others from catching the disease.

Later pages have some great compound images of flies and mosquitoes spreading disease, and various images of different organ systems.