100 Years Ago – Steerage Passengers with Mumps

The 3 September 1920 issue of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin contained an article about Filipino steerage passengers who were ill with mumps:

The steerage was an area on a ship’s lower deck that was used as accommodation for people who could only afford the cheapest ticket sold for passage.

In the steerage, passengers were crowded together for extended periods of time in often unsanitary conditions with poor air circulation. Given these circumstances, it is no surprise that diseases such as mumps spread easily.

It is interesting to note that the article states, “The disease is not contagious or quarantinable.” Up to the time it was written, experiments to prove that mumps is contagious had been unsuccessful.*

*In 1933, Doctors Claud D. Johnson and Ernest W. Goodpasture conducted experiments on monkeys and were able to demonstrate that the virus that causes mumps is transmissible. They detailed their findings in an article titled “An Investigation of the Etiology of Mumps,” that was published in the January 1934 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.