camera

Dr. Homer J. Hartzell’s camera.

Dr. Homer J. Hartzell headed the Cleveland infectious disease hospital during the city’s last smallpox epidemic, in 1901-1902. Hartzell kept a personal photographic log of the epidemic. Some 75 glass negatives, 40 lantern slides, and a small album came to the Dittrick in 1986, along with Hartzell’s own camera used to capture the epidemic. Dr. Hartzell used a Pony Premo E camera which sold for $8.00 in the Rochester Optical Company Catalogue in 1898.