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Architecture! Designing for Health in the Early 20th Century

It’s #MuseumWeek, where museums around the world take to Twitter in a behind-the-scenes look at collections! Today’s theme is architecture. Follow us here on the blog, on Twitter and on Instagram all week to keep up with each event! #architectureMW Rapid population growth and industrialization at the turn of the 20th century meant many Clevelanders faced a variety of health concerns associated with urban living. With large numbers of the city's workers employed in factories, industrial accidents and occupational hazards from chronic exposure to toxic substances like lead or mercury increased at alarming rates. In recognition of these workplace dangers, many...

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Mosquito or Man — "Steadily or Surely Conquered"

With the recent global attention on the Zika virus (we won't say emergence, as Zika virus itself is not new), public health programs focused on controlling the mosquito vector enter a debate with its own long and storied past. Pick up any early 20th century book on infectious disease management and you'll find confident statements assuring the victory of humans over illness and death. One text from 1909 called Mosquito or Man? speaks of this inevitable triumph over disease with an air of colonial domination, stating: The tropical world is today being steadily and surely conquered...The campaigns show that the three great insect-carried scourges of...

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Touch and Go: Cars, Health and Cleveland's First Traffic Signals

Today's Google doodle reminds us of the innovation and order brought by Garrett Morgan's creation of the traffic signal. Cleveland became the first city to install these devices on August 5th, 1914 at the bustling Euclid Avenue and E. 105th St. intersection -- on the current campus of Cleveland Clinic, just down the street from CWRU and our museum . The traffic signal became a necessary fixture in light of alarming statistics about the dangers of automobiles and their fatal accidents in the early 20th century. From when the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting information in 1906 to 1914, the number...

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