Excerpts from “In The Hospital: Facts for TB Patients”
pages 1, 3, 7
ca. 1962
Maine State Museum 2004.113.14
These excerpts come from a booklet that was distributed to tuberculosis (TB) patients while they received treatment. The booklet’s simple language and pictures suggest that it would have been targeted at patients with a wide variety of educational levels. The booklet was made in 1962, which is interesting because Maine’s TB sanatoriums were closing around this time.
Excerpts from the booklet explain what TB is and encourage patients to take treatment seriously. Much like during the coronavirus pandemic, sick people were asked to quarantine during the TB pandemic. Both diseases can be spread through the air.
This booklet was published by the National Tuberculosis Association (now known as the American Lung Association), which was founded in 1904. A symbol on the back of the booklet that looks like a cross with two strikes through it represented the global fight against TB.
Saturday, Oct 12, 1918
Dear Mother: –
I’m in Louisville again this week-end and am staying at the YMCA for the night. I have a nice clean room all to myself and it does seem good to be quiet and rest for a while. I was lucky to get a pass this week and for only 10% of the company were allowed to go. I had a good excuse, tho– to get my hat reblocked. The other day the captain said it was the worst that he ever saw so he was glad enough to let me come to town to have it fixed. It really looks like new now. I had a good supper when I got here. It was nearly 5 before I left camp. We worked all day–three hours of exams this morning, then cleaning up the barrack and moving some materiel down on the drill field. I found out I could go on pass at 3 o’clock but had to stay and make some mechanical drawings of parts of the 3 in. gun which took me a good hour.
I called up the Munn’s tonight and am going out there to dinner tomorrow. Isn’t it dandy of them to be so nice to me. The churches are all closed tomorrow on account of the flu. It is quite bad in the city as well as at camp. We still have our two medical inspections daily. There ae not many new cases in our own battery just now. They have taken a whole section of barracks for a temporary hospital and are treating light cases there. The fellow named Cobb from Portland Oregon whom I told you about in one of my letters died last week with it. He was a dandy fellow– was married and had a little family – two children I think. It’s nice you can have Lib home for a few days. Your telling about getting up that dandy supper for them made me decidedly homesick for we eat in the worst kind of way just now. So many cooks are sick we have joined three batteries (500 men) together for mess. We have to use our old mess kits and stand in line a long time. The food is family good– when you get it, but you only get about half enough. Did I tell you I had gained 8 lbs since I came here?
That doesn’t speak as if I were starving to death, does it? Where we have so little time to ourselves at noon, it makes it hard to spend so much time in line. Often we go over for mess at 11:45– just as soon as we are back from drill and don’t get there till 12:15 – ten minutes before we are due to fall in again. These precious 10 min. also have to be spent in shining shoes for we have an inspection the first thing after dinner.
There is an extra just out that the gunmans have accepted Wilson’s terms but I don’t believe it. I hope the war wont be settled that way but will be decided on the battle front. The fellows here are already worrying for fear they wont get their commissions. That is the least of my troubles – if war will only end, I don’t care a rap about a commission.
Reveille has been changed from 5:30 to 5:45 fifteen more minutes to sleep in the morning now. So far the two mornings the new rule has been enforce, I have been up at 5:15 to shave before reveille.
I had a dandy box of chocolates from Connie this week. I sure did enjoy them for anything sweet is a novelty around camp. The Flu makes it impossible to get to a canteen to buy even a cake of sweet chocolate.
One of the fellows near me had some jelly sent him this week and another fellow some crackers. A crowd of 5 or 6 of us had a feed on them the other night which was lots of fun. It seemed just like college once more.
Well it is more than bedtime and since I’m tired out with the week’s work I believe I’ll say good–night to all my dear family and run up-stairs to bed. Here’s a kiss for you, my dear. X
Love to all,
Sum.
P.S. George St. John is in the same Battery with me still. He lets me read his Express once in a while when it comes – 3 days late.
S –
Source 2 - Document
Source 2 - Document
Sumner Cobb letter
ca. 1918
Maine State Historical Society 1022300
This is a letter Sumner Cobb wrote to his family in Maine. He wrote from Camp Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky in 1918. Sumner was born in Gorham, Maine in 1895 and was around 22-23 years old when he wrote this letter.
Sumner was one of three brothers who all served in World War I. His brothers were William and Herbert. Both William and Herbert fought in the war outside of the United States while Sumner remained in America. Sumner was stationed at two military bases during his time in the army: Camp Devens in Massachusetts and Camp Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.
Sumner didn’t face dangers of overseas fighting and life in the trenches. However, he was at risk of contracting the Spanish Flu. It was spreading throughout the United States at the end of the war. The disease spread quickly in military camps where soldiers lived close together. He wrote about it a lot in his letters home between September and October 1918.
By the sound of the letters, Sumner did not become sick with the flu during his time in the army. Sumner and William both survived the war, but Herbert was killed on October 14, 1918 just one month before the end of the war on November 11.
Source 3 - Image
Source 3 - Image
Hints for the Sick Room
ca. 1919
Maine State Museum 2004.113.3
This booklet cover from the John Hancock Life Insurance company of Boston, MA shows a young woman seated by the bed of a child. She is handing the child a cup. The child is propped up on pillows and is tucked in with a doll and story book.
At this time, women had extra caregiving duties because of World War I. Many men were off fighting overseas as the pandemic raged at home, leaving women to care for the children.
At the time when this booklet was published, the country was dealing with an influenza pandemic. The 1918 flu pandemic was also called “The Spanish Flu.”
Source 4 - Image
Source 4 - Image
News office storefront
Portland, ME
ca. 1918
Maine Historical Society 18561
This is a photograph of a newspaper storefront (likely the Portland “Evening Express”) in Monument Square in Portland, Maine. Because of the World War I information in the poster, we know that the photo was taken between the Armistice in November 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in June 1919.
The man standing in front is Alexander Boothby. The posters in the window talk about Spanish Flu casualties, World War I peace talks, women’s division recruitment, war bonds, and the Red Cross. The news board reads, “Influenza has killed 8,000,000 in three months in the entire world.”
Source 5 - Document
Source 5 - Document
Advertisement for Dr. D.P. Ordway’s Last and Best Liniment
Portland, ME
1913
Maine State Archives 208376
This advertisement was placed in a 1913 newspaper. It advertises “Dr. D.P. Ordway’s Last and Best Liniment,” a medicine made in Portland, Maine. The label suggests that the company started in 1881 and this formula was created in 1912. A “liniment” is a liquid or lotion that is made to rub on the body to relieve pain or other medical problems. “Bronchial complaints” are issues with the bronchial tubes, which carry air to the lungs.
At this time in history, both tuberculosis and polio were spreading across Maine and the globe. Because this product is advertised for lung issues such as bronchial complaints and pneumonia, it is very likely that people with tuberculosis could have used it.
The label says that the liniment is mostly alcohol, with opium and chloroform. At the time, alcohol and opium were common ingredients in medicine. These are also highly addictive substances that can dull pain. Chloroform is a chemical byproduct of water disinfected with chlorine. It was used as an anesthetic (to put people to sleep before surgery), a painkiller, and a cough medication.
However, today we know that chloroform is toxic for the kidneys and liver. One of the earliest reports of this was in 1848 when a 15-year-old girl died from the medicine. Even after it became clear that chloroform had dangerous effects, it was still used in mouthwashes and ointments. Finally, in 1976, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of chloroform.
This product claims to treat everything from headaches to dog bites. Medicines like this are called “cure-alls,” which usually means they don’t really cure anything! It’s impossible for us to know for sure whether Dr. Ordway’s Liniment hurt people’s health. However, many companies still sold dangerous medicines to consumers even after their toxicity was widely known. Sometimes the harm was from ignorance, sometimes from greed.
[Transcribed excerpt] Maine State board of health 1880
Does Vaccination Protect?
Issued by the State Board of Health of Maine
“…we find that the correct answer to this question is not so clearly in the minds of the people generally as it should be, therefore these facts are given. About one hundred years ago Jenner discovered that, when a person is inoculated with cow-pox virus so as to have cow-pox, the attack of this lighter disease gives immunity from the much more dangerous disease, smallpox…
Dr. Dunn of Minnesota contrasts the histories of two families, one vaccinated and the other not. ‘The families are of the same size, living a few miles apart. The ages are nearly the same. On account of carelessness or parsimony neither family had been vaccinated. Small-pox enters one; still they take no preventative measures. The disease has the same scope as it had in the days before vaccination, and it quickly shows itself to be the same old pest that it was before the immortal Jenner robbed it of its terrors. Of the nine unprotected persons it rapidly destroys three, ruins an eye for yet another, and scars the other five, four of them girls, in a frightful way.
‘The other family of ten hear that they have been exposed to small-pox, not aware that the disease has already been for ten days operating in the system of one of its members. They are vaccinated with reliable bovine lymph. Two days later one of the ten comes down with small-pox, which runs a mild course. They are all daily and nightly exposed to the disease, their vaccinations work well and not one of them is attacked.’”
Source 6 - Document
Source 6 - Document
Excerpt from “Does Vaccination Protect?”
ca. 1886
Maine State Library H40.5.Va 113/886
This memo from the State Board of Health of Maine (later renamed the Maine Department of Health) advocates for Mainers to use vaccines to protect themselves from infectious diseases. It addresses common misconceptions about diseases, including the false idea that vaccines don’t prevent diseases but instead just make diseases milder. This may have been in response to anti-vaccination movements that were growing in the late 1800s, particularly in England.
When Maine became a state in 1820, there wasn’t much public health infrastructure. The State Board of Health gradually gained authority over statewide health issues like safe drinking water and restaurant safety. This document represents a time when the state government was trying to gain more control over public health by educating citizens.
Pandemic Primary Source Sets developed in collaboration between the Maine Historical Society, Maine State Archives, Maine State Library, and Maine State Museum.
