In 1902, the Public Health Service opened the first hospital on Ellis Island. In the years which followed, a large hospital complex was built on the south side of the island. These hospitals not only provided care for detained immigrants, they also allowed physicians an opportunity to conduct more detailed medical examinations before making a final decision regarding deportation.

On a visit in 1922, the British Ambassador noted with amazement that the Public Health Service officers stationed at the hospital dealt with everything from obscure tropical diseases to a broken arm. The hospital, Sir Aukland Geddes said, also served as a "maternity home and an insane asylum."  

In many ways, the Ellis Island hospital was structured as a teaching hospital, with interns providing much of the routine care.

Public Health Service officers and nurses did try to see and evaluate patients every morning. But these hospital rounds could be slowed by the language barrier. While the Public Health Service provided interpreters, the existence of so many dialects, combined with the difficulties in translating medical concepts, often made it difficult for rounds to be completed in a morning.

Infectious Diseases Wards

Trachoma, typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis, smallpox, syphilis, favus: before the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, many now-forgotten diseases posed a serious threat. In the absence of effective treatments for most diseases, the Public Health Service relied heavily on quarantine to fight and contain epidemics.

Patients suffering from an infectious disease were typically isolated.  While treatment was provided, this treatment was often rudimentary by modern standards. Because quarantines could last for weeks, patients were often allowed to read and engage in other activities, provided they remained in isolation.

Maternity Wards

Although European, Asian and African women traditionally gave birth with the assistance of female midwives in their own homes, immigrant women gave birth in one of the island's hospitals. Often, they were attended by male physicians from the Public Health Service.

For normal deliveries, the care provided by the Pubic Health Service was not significantly better than that given by well-trained traditional midwives. But for women who were experiencing difficult births, the care provided by the Public Health Service could mean the difference between life and death.

Over three hundred children were born on Ellis Island. Some, such as Ellis Curran Newton, were given names which marked their special status as the first native-born Americans in their family.

The Operating Room

Ellis Island boasted a state of the art operating room.  Incorporating new ideas about the importance of sterilization, the operating room was constructed with tile walls and a tile floor. The room could be and was cleaned after each operation. A skylight also provided natural light, enabling the surgeons to see more clearly.

Trachoma Operations

One of the more common operations performed at Ellis Island was a surgical procedure which was designed to cure patients suffering from trachoma. Today, trachoma can be easily cured with antibiotics but in the early twentieth century, treatment for this disease was much more complex and sometimes less effective than it is today.

Public health officials and immigrants viewed trachoma with dread. Not only is trachoma highly infectious, it can also cause blindness. For the Public Health Service, curing patients suffering from this disease, which was endemic both in and outside the United States, was considered to be of the utmost importance.

Trachoma patients who were believed to be in the early stages of the disease were often provided with cold compresses which would be applied to the eye for an hour. After each soaking, the eye was then washed with antiseptic solution. This procedure was repeated four times a day. If this mild therapy failed to cure the patient with a few weeks, more drastic measures were taken.

The patient would be taken to the operating room where her eyelids would be inverted. A nurse would then apply cocaine to the inside of the patient's eyelids; this would serve as an anesthetic. The surgeon would then squeeze the eyelid to force out the infectious granules of trachoma. Next, the surgeon would make a series of small shallow incisions on the inner surface of the eyelid. Bluestone, a form of copper sulfate, was then rubbed on the diseased eyelid. If this procedure did not remove all of the trachoma granules, the eyelid would then be scrubbed with a steel toothbrush-like instrument. Generally, this treatment was sufficient to cure the patient.

The complex nature of this procedure meant that immigrants who were treated for trachoma at Ellis Island often stayed on the island for weeks or months.