Having completed a two years’ term of service on the interne medical staff of Bellevue Hospital, where large numbers of typhus cases were treated, I was placed in charge of the tents on Blackwell’s Island by the Commissioner of Charities. Soon after entering upon the service, I noticed that patients were continually admitted from a single building in East Twenty-second Street.

Impressed with the importance of closing this fever-nest, I visited the tenement and was not surprised at the large number of cases of fever which it furnished our hospital. It is difficult to describe the scene that the interior A Fever
Nest of the house presented to the visitor. The building was in an extreme state of dilapidation36 generally; the doors and windows were broken; the cellar was partly filled with filthy sewage; the floors were littered with decomposing straw, which the occupants used for bedding; every available place, from cellar to garret, was crowded with immigrants—men, women, and children. The whole establishment was reeking with filth, and the atmosphere was heavy with the sickening odor of the deadly typhus, which reigned supreme in every room.

The necessity of immediately closing this house to further occupation by immigrants, until it was thoroughly cleansed and made decent