TYPHOID STRIKES RINGLING BROS.

An Excerpt From The Book

HOSPITAL

By Edwina J. Lewis

© February, 2002

Reproduced here by special permission from the author.


PART III HAPPENINGS

Back in 1934 Jan was a senior nursing student at Harper Hospital in Detroit. Having used one of her overnight passes to spend Saturday with her sister and family in northern Detroit, she returned to the nurses' residence at mid-afternoon on Sunday.

Rose, a classmate who had just come off duty from a hospital ward suggested that they play some tennis. So they changed their shoes, took racquets and balls, and adjourned to the courts behind McLaughlin Hall.

Jan, in the south court was facing the Hudson wing of the hospital. Six stories high, it has a glassed-in sunporch at the end of each level. She knew that at the present time 3 Hudson and 5 Hudson were closed due to a low hospital census, so was surprised that there seemed to be a great deal of activity in the sunporch area of both those floors.

People were walking around there, but since none were dressed in the white garb of doctors and nurses, the girls wondered why there were visitors to floors that were currently closed.

Rose and Jan went to the hospital cafeteria near the end of the supper hour and learned the exciting news from one of the doctors remaining in the dining room! Two floors of the Hudson building had been opened to accommodate people from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus who had typhoid fever!


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