Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital Case Study

Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital is the first public hospital to be established in the United States of America. The hospital was opened in the year 1902 and it was operational until 1930. The entity was a detention facility for immigrants who wanted to access the country but the authorities had found them unfit. The hospital was used to hold the emigrants as their requests were being reviewed. Some of the emigrants were processed into the country and others were sent back to their countries of origin. Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital was one of the largest hospitals in the country and up to today, it is still being used as one of the cases studied in the public healthcare system. In a year, twelve million emigrants were processed through the hospital in a year. On arrival, the immigrants would first go through a thirty-second health inspection in the immigration center. More scrutiny was placed on individuals that arrived through the third and second class. The

Most of the diseases were tropical diseases because most of the immigrants were from the tropical areas . The hospital was considered as one of the most extensive public health systems in the world. Advanced methods in medicine were used in the hospital like fluoroscopy. Autoclave technology was used to sterilize the mattresses of the immigrants to prevent the spread of diseases. The medical equipment was scary to the immigrants because they were not familiar with them. Some thought that the American authorities were planning to harm them in the guise of medicine. For example, most of them were very unfamiliar with the x-ray machine. They thought that the machine was supposed to uncover what they had hidden under their garments and they were very defensive. Most of the immigrants had sown money under their garments and they thought that the authorities wanted to take the money