The unusual design of the Observation Ward of the Philadelphia Contagious Disease Hospital balanced the competing demands of airborne and contact prevention. The small cubicles minimized casual contact between patients in the same room. The provision of a separate bathroom and kitchen/service room for each cubicle allowed complete aseptic procedural separation from other patients. Caregivers entered and exited through the bathroom, disinfecting and downing up to prevent transfer of germs.
To minimize airborne transfer, an open air corridor separated each of the cubicles from the others. Given the climatic extremes of Philadelphia, only arched openings provided air flow into the otherwise roofed and walled space.
The Observation Building was a specialized pavilion of a larger, existing hospital of multiple identical pavilions, each of which held patients of only one prevalent disease (e.g. scarlet fever, diphtheria, and measles). The Observation Ward, provided separate accommodations patients with rare or dangerous diseases (e.g. anthrax, meningitis or pneumonia), and for newly admitted patients until laboratory confirmation of their diagnosis allowed their assignment to the proper larger pavilion.
Plan and photos from D.L. Richardson, “Construction of Isolation Hospitals,” Modern Hospital 13:2 (Aug 1919), 414.
The new Contagious Disease Hospital in 1909 replaced an older, existing facility, that had become surrounded by densely populated neighborhoods. The site for the new facility was at Front street and Luzerne Avenue, five miles north of city center, with nearby open land, parks, cemeteries, light industries, and other institutions. This remote site minimized the chance the disease spreading by air to its surroundings, but also by contact from the casual interactions of caregivers with nearby communities.
