Ellis Island Convalescent Wards
Failing a health inspection didn’t automatically mean deportation. Ellis Island officials only rejected 1% of the immigrants for a medical condition. Some medical conditions were temporary and would result in a stay in the island’s hospitals on the south side of the island. This area included measles wards and psychiatric facilities for further evaluation and convalescence. Isolating disease, sanitation practices, and good ventilation helped keep conditions like measles from spreading into New York’s general population by holding the contagious afflicted in these wards. But it wasn’t just the patient confined to these wards – if one of their party was detained in the hospital wing, the family members and others traveling with them would also be detained for the duration of the illness, to prevent the illness from spreading into the American population.