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Ipswich Hospital Museum: Ipswich Hospital's Epidemic Ward (Transcript)
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The Epidemic Ward, as it was called, was built in 1917 and there was still this belief in the importance of ventilation.
All they were, were canvas blinds and at night they would pull the canvas blinds down during the day the blinds were pulled up and that was that idea of clean air, air circulating all the time.
This fence goes all the way around the epidemic [ward], so this is epidemic here, and just imagine there's a fence completely around it, and it's to keep people out and keep the kids or everybody in.
So the parents would come to the veranda and the children were brought out and they would talk to their parents who were standing at the fence and the parents could not bring any toys or anything for the child and anything that they left had to be left in a box on the fence and then the nurse would go out and get whatever it was that the parent had left and take it inside.
Scarlet fever and diphtheria were the two major diseases that were killing children at the time. There was fear of it and children being sent away to grandparents and things like that so they would not be coming in contact with the other children that were there.
Were you getting nurses, even as late as this, contracting these diseases?
Yes, because there was no immunization for the diseases at all at that stage and of course there were no antibiotics. Many of these things like scarlet fever can be treated just with a course of antibiotics and people still get scarlet fever.
Typhoid was so rampant at different times. There was not enough accommodation at the hospital and they'd have to put patients in tents. They'd have so many, people were being admitted up to the showgrounds and being treated in tents.
We were getting cases like about 65 patients with typhoid or with cholera at any one time.