Old Main, Rock Island, Illinois
Students and employees at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois have spent the last few months trying to manage the dramatic and often troubling changes to their education, work, and daily activities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this is not the first time that members of the Augustana community have dealt with disease.
During the 2021 J-Term, students in History 260: Making a Museum conducted oral histories with people at Augustana College and they investigated the archives of the Augustana Observer, a long-running student newspaper at the college, to better understand our changing perceptions of and experiences with disease. From scholars like Jacalyn Duffin and Charles Rosenberg the class learned how culture shapes our ideas about illness, while historians like Catherine Gidney taught our class the importance of connecting the histories of medicine and higher education. The following page contains both links to our archive of collected materials and a six-part digital exhibition that tells the stories of people from the past.
Early Epidemics (Cholera, Tuberculosis, & Typhoid)
by Zoe Arvanitis, Cole Bhardwaj, Shawn Geison, & Huy Nguyen
The Augustana Observer often reported on people who were ill–a stark contrast to today, when this kind of information would not be made public. This article from April of 1949 lists the name of a student confined at the Rock Island Tuberculosis Sanitarium and the information needed to write to her. Sanitariums were facilities devoted to treating Tuberculosis. Patients could be closely monitored and administered a treatment that often consisted of being outdoors, taking walks, and eating a healthy diet.
Augustana College has experienced its fair share of epidemics between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th. Diseases not only tore their way through Augustana’s campus, but they also had devastating impacts on the Rock Island community. Without the help of the surrounding area, Augustana College would not have fared as well as it did. Augustana needed the help of the community in order to keep their students, faculty, and staff safe through difficult times. Its students often offered help to the community through fundraisers to both improve research on and outcomes for people suffering from specific diseases. This story hopes to shed light on how Augustana College managed the diseases of Typhoid Fever, Tuberculosis, and Cholera.
Please view the full exhibition, including an interactive timeline, about early epidemics via this link.
Want to dig even deeper? Here is a link to the pdfs of the articles we gathered from the Augustana Observer and the link to a spreadsheet (Google Sheet) that provides a guide to what you’ll learn about different diseases from those articles.
Influenza and Other Seasonal Illnesses
by Abby Holtan, Matt Kessler, Joseph Knapik, & Anthony Sus
Augustana lost Professor Alger Anker, professor of violin, history of music, and director of orchestra, in January of 1919. Although the official cause of death was not released, the Spanish flu was the suspected culprit.
In an era before antibiotics like penicillin, Scarlet Fever could sometimes prove deadly. On March 9th, 1927, two Augustana students lost their lives to Scarlet Fever. Paul Munson, left, and Gladys Oberg, right, were both members of the junior class. Scarlet fever is a disease resulting from a strep infection. Symptoms include a red rash that covers most of the body, a sore throat, and a high fever.
During certain times of the year, some illnesses and diseases become more prevalent than others. Throughout the years, Augustana College and the United States as a whole have faced their own outbreaks of such diseases. The diseases that we will cover are Influenza, particularly the deadly Spanish Influenza, Scarlet Fever, Stomach flu, and Mononucleosis. This exhibition will demonstrate the sporadic nature of these seasonal diseases, how they hit hard, disappear, and then a new threat emerges.
Please view the full interactive exhibition about seasonal diseases through this link.
Want to learn more? Follow this link to pdfs of the articles we gathered from the Augustana Observer and this link to find a spreadsheet (Google Sheet) that documents what you’ll learn about different diseases from those articles.
Polio & Other Now-Vaccinated Diseases
by Carter Foat, Kira Garza, and Maja Johnson
Rock Island County was hit hard by polio in the 1950s. In 1954, it saw more cases than the other 42 counties in the area. Augustana College was not spared. In January 1950, an Augustana College choir student named Julie Holmgren was diagnosed with Polio. Due to her illness, her legs became paralyzed. During that same month, Augustana asked for contributions to the March of Dimes, a nationwide fundraiser to cure Polio.
Controversies over vaccination are not new. In October of 1929, health authorities in Rock Island ordered Augustana College faculty and students to be vaccinated against Smallpox as a preventative measure. Overall, students were cooperative and willing to receive vaccinations, but a later story explained that a few Augustana students fought the vaccination orders.
As a community, we hope to manage COVID-19 in some of the same ways we managed diseases in the past. With our hope that vaccines will help to resolve the COVID-19 pandemic, we can look back on the great success of vaccines in the past. There are a plethora of diseases that plagued the nation in the past, but have now been eradicated by vaccines. The graph above is called an n-gram and shows how often each disease discussed is mentioned in books from a specific period of time. The time period of this graph is from 1830 to the present, and it shows data for smallpox, measles, polio, mumps, whooping cough, and chicken pox.
The full interactive StoryMap about now-vaccinated diseases may be found by clicking this link.
Want to go deeper into this topic? Here is a link to the pdfs of the articles we gathered during our research in the Augustana Observer and a link to a spreadsheet (Google Sheet) that provides a guide to what you’ll learn about different diseases from each article.
AIDS and Sexually-Transmitted Diseases
by Brenson Brown, Leoul Gezu, Samantha Goodmanson, and Caroline Hurst
An article in the October 22, 1993 Augustana Observer is one of many that showcases Lindsey Morgan, an Augustana student who did a lot to increase AIDS awareness and to reduce stigma in the community. Despite opposition from her family, Morgan worked at the Camp Heartland Project, a summer camp for children affected by AIDS, and she went on the nationally-broadcast Phil Donahue Show.
A letter to the editor from an anonymous Augustana student in the October 14th, 1994 Observer explains just how ashamed students were when they caught an STD. It was a stigma that made them less likely to both get treatment and to encourage others to practice safe sex.
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) have been considered a global epidemic since the mid 1980s. HIV/AIDS is thought to have developed from Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV). It is unknown how old this exact strain of HIV/AIDS is, but similar viruses developed from SIV are thought to be centuries old. The reason HIV/AIDS became a worldwide epidemic was mostly due to the ease of travel in the late twentieth century. Most deaths attributed to HIV/AIDS were not from the virus itself, but complications from other diseases such as Tuberculosis. Much like earlier epidemics, the HIV/AIDS epidemic followed a predictable pattern and sadly led to the loss of many human lives. Here we explore how the HIV/AIDS epidemic affected Augustana College and the surrounding area. Additionally, we will explore how other STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) have impacted Augustana College and the Quad Cities. The people infected with STDs have faced intense stigma, although that stigma has gradually lessened over time.
The full interactive timeline about STDs at Augustana College may be found at this link.
Want to take a deeper dive? Here is a link to the pdfs of the articles we gathered from the Augustana Observer and a link to the spreadsheet (Google Sheet) that explains what you’ll learn about different diseases from those articles.
Non-Communicable Diseases
by Mark Dennison, Utah Keehner, Angela Ruehle, and Adam Schumacher
The article above talks about the fraternities and sororities that participated in a talent show. This was a student-led charity event that helped raise money for the Candlelighters, a childhood cancer charity, in 1995. The article notes that the fundraiser had typically focused on AIDS, but was now transitioning to the fight against cancer, as students “thought that cancer was just as important.”
Non-communicable diseases like lung cancer, heart attacks, and diabetes appear to have grown as subjects of concern during the second half of the twentieth century–a dramatic change that can be seen in the amount of publicity each gained in the Augustana student newspaper. This growth in discussion matches their actual growth as medical problems for many Americans. To fight these diseases, Augustana students held fundraisers and paid increasing attention towards the impacts of both lifestyle changes and environmental exposures.
Click this link to see the full exhibition about non-communicable diseases through an interactive StoryMap.
Want to go beyond our interactive map? Then follow this link to pdfs of the articles we gathered from the Augustana Observer as well as this link to a spreadsheet (Google Sheet) that indicates what you’ll learn about different diseases from those articles.
Oral Histories of COVID-19
To better understand disease on campus today, our class gathered ten oral histories from faculty, staff, administrators, and students to learn more about how they have coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. Below are common themes that stood out.
College Safety Procedures: A task force called Augie Strong led the college’s attempts to control the spread of disease across campus, whether in the dining hall, the classroom, or the swimming pool; yet, these necessary procedures often felt very isolating, especially for students. Our narrators discussed college policies, plexiglass installation, mask mandates, social distancing, and the important, yet exhausting process of contact tracing.
Changes to Socializing and Communication: Facing an infectious airborne disease, members of the Augustana College community learned to keep their physical distance from one another. Some discussed the loss of their old social lives, but most considered ways that their socializing with friends and family transformed. Technology meant that meetings and activities were now largely done online. Others found that they were staying away from extended family, but in suddenly constant contact with the people in their immediate family.
Work at the College: Other narrators discussed the behind-the-scenes challenges for faculty and staff. At times, many of them were working from home, which provided both challenges and benefits. Augustana later transitioned to a hybrid learning that mixed online with face-to-face interactions. Many discussed how much they missed seeing co-workers and students. Others discussed changing work procedures and teaching techniques.
Hope for the future: This series of interviews happened in the middle of January of 2021, which was right at the beginning of a major coronavirus vaccine program. Interviewees were often hopeful that vaccines would bring back “real” gatherings and many of the other daily activities that they had previously taken for granted.
Coping and Not Coping: The pandemic caused incredible disruptions to community members’ daily activities. The results varied. Many interviewees experienced great anxiety and fear. They worried about contracting the disease and passing it off. Others experienced great feelings of loss—whether about delayed or diminished events, about their inability to visit family, or about the loss of loved ones to the disease. They worked hard to cope with these stressors through walks, books, and other activities. Faculty and students were forced into teaching and learning online, but persisted and overcame early concerns.
Isolation: Many students narrated the great exhaustion of having to sequester, quarantine, or isolate due to contact with people infected by the disease. They were taken out of their familiar living quarters and then asked to stay inside somewhere new, sometimes alongside strangers and often for a period of two weeks. There was quite an emotional toll to this experience–for many students, this was the first time that they had been sick away from home. There was also great boredom as the days stretched on with nothing but streaming videos and homework to keep them entertained.
Divisions and Coming Together: The pandemic brought both the power to divide and the power to unite. Some narrators discussed the anti-Asian racism that happened due to the pandemic’s origins in China. Others considered how harshly they were judging others’ character because they knew that the lack of following guidelines by some could be deadly for others. However, other interviewees discussed just how much unity they felt during this pandemic. Everyone was going through the same restrictions and the same history-altering events together.
Learn more about the effects of COVID-19 at Augustana College by visiting the original oral histories and our transcripts of them below:
Further Resources
Want to know more about the history of disease? Our class read a number of histories about disease in Canada and the U.S. that we suggest. Here is a short selected bibliography:
- Jacalyn Duffin, “Chapter 1: The Disease Game: An Introduction to the Concepts and Construction of Disease,” Lovers and Livers: Disease Concepts in History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 1-37.
- Chris Feudtner, “A Disease in Motion: Diabetes History and the New Paradigm of Transmuted Disease,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 39 (2) Winter 1996: 158-170
- Catherine Gidney, “Institutional Responses to Communicable Diseases at Victoria College, University of Toronto, 1900-1940,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 24 (2) 2007: 265-290.
- Mitchell Hammond, Epidemics and the Modern World (University of Toronto Press, 2020).
- Irvine Loudon, “Chlorosis, Anaemia, and Anorexia Nervosa,” British Medical Journal 281 (1980): 1669-1675.
- Heather Munro Prescott, “The White Plague Goes to College: Tuberculosis Prevention Programs in Colleges and Universities, 1920-1960,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74 (4) Winter 2000, 735-772.
- Charles Rosenberg, “Chapter 14: Explaining Epidemics,” Explaining Epidemics and Other Studies in the History of Medicine (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), 293-304.
- Nancy Tomes, “Destroyer and Teacher”: Managing the Masses During the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic,” Public Health Reports 125 (Supplement 3) 2010: 48-62.
Thanks
Thanks goes first to the narrators who allowed us to interview them for the oral history portion of this project. We appreciate their time and their willingness to make their experiences available to people now and in the future. We hope that more oral histories will be collected about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the future.
Our research was also made possible by the Augustana College Special Collections. Special thanks to Harrison Phillis, who hurriedly uploaded additional back issues of the Augustana Observer so that we could conduct research from a distance. Check out the Observer and Special Collections’ other great digital resources at the library’s website.
Finally, thanks to the many generations of student journalists who have documented Augustana’s history. Please visit the current Augustana Observer’s website to learn more about current events at the college.