{"id":239,"date":"2011-07-29T16:08:59","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T16:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tmcldev.wpengine.com\/mcgovern\/2011\/07\/29\/public-health-and-christmas-seals\/"},"modified":"2022-03-30T18:36:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T18:36:32","slug":"public-health-and-christmas-seals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/2011\/07\/29\/public-health-and-christmas-seals\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Health and Christmas Seals"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant<\/strong>
\nmcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu<\/a>
\nYou know I never pass up an opportunity to scan something.
\nWe received an image request early this week that sent me scurrying off to look into Institutional Collection 34, the San Jacinto Lung Association<\/a>[1], a collection with which I had never before had occasion to work.\u00a0 Oh, my.\u00a0 It was full of scrapbooks!\u00a0 The client was not completely sure which images were needed so I took a lot of photographs to show what kind of material we had (the books are too large to scan without an army of help to position them).\u00a0 The bulk of the items in the scrapbooks were related to Christmas Seals<\/a>[2].
\nChristmas Seals<\/strong> began in the first decade of the twentieth century<\/a>[3] as a fund-raiser and awareness campaign against pulmonary tuberculosis<\/a>[4], which was, at the time, a major public health concern worldwide.\u00a0 It is still a serious problem in developing countries, although it has become fairly uncommon in the West<\/a>[5].\u00a0 The idea was that you bought and resold the seals–in the same manner as Girl Scout cookies and marching-band chocolate bars–and stuck them on your letters.\u00a0 Everyone sends more mail at Christmas, right?\u00a0 The money from the seals went to support research and treatment, and seeing the seals on envelopes was meant to help publicize the issue.
\nYou can still buy Christmas Seals today, to fund research in lung cancer and asthma.
\nOn a tangent: Christmas Seals are what philatelists call “cinderella stamps<\/a>“[6], meaning that they are stamp-like in format and appearance but have no value as postage.
\nReduction of the tuberculosis rate in the United States, though, has come swiftly and recently.\u00a0 Until the discovery of antibiotics in the mid-1940’s<\/a>[6], there was little doctors could do medicinally.\u00a0 Patients were rested and fed in the hopes that their bodies would fight off the infection<\/a>[7].
\nHere are parts 1<\/a> and 2<\/a>[8] of a 1930 newsreel about tuberculosis treatment in sanitaria (these are from Los Angeles, but they’re still interesting).
\nTuberculosis was also a popular subject for blues<\/a>[9] and early country<\/a> musicians[10].\u00a0 That could be an entire blog entry on its own.
\nOnce the technology became available, and became portable enough, many cities instituted mobile chest x-ray buses so that as many people as possible could be diagnosed early and treated.\u00a0 This one is from Wharton County.\u00a0 The bus is a 1946 or 1947 Chevrolet, and it was probably new when the picture was taken:
\n

\"\"<\/a>
Wharton County mobile x-ray unit<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nHere is a similar bus, in Seattle<\/a>, Washington, in the 1950’s[12]; one from Atlanta<\/a>[13] (the citation estimates 1945, although the truck appears to be a just-barely-postwar COE [cab-over-engine], possibly a 1946 Ford<\/a>[14]); and a fleet<\/a>[15] of them from Tacoma, Washington, 1956.
\nPapers in Houston (and, I assume, elsewhere) ran a series of cartoons with tuberculosis facts.\u00a0 This one is from 1953:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
Did You Know?<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Christmas Seals, specifically, seem to have made occasional product-placement type appearances in regular cartoons.\u00a0 The story line of this “Rex Morgan, M.D.” from 1952 has nothing to do with tuberculosis, but there is a big Christmas Seal poster in the last frame:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
Rex Morgan, M.D.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Christmas Seals had their own public service announcements (you can see some on YouTube<\/a>)[16], hosted by celebrities.\u00a0 Being famous wasn’t insurance: Tuberculosis could count Scarlett O’Hara herself–Vivien Leigh<\/a>[17]–amongst its high-profile victims.
\nBecause they’re too good to leave out, we’ll finish with a series of magazine ads featuring enlarged versions of annual Seal designs:
\nI think 1947<\/strong> might be my favorite.\u00a0 I’d frame that and hang it on my wall, except that the word “TUBERCULOSIS” across the top in great, big, letters is kind of a mood-killer.
\n\"1947\"<\/a>
\n1949<\/strong> went modern:
\n

\"\"<\/a>
1949<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n1951<\/strong> featured a classic Santa Claus:
\n
\"\"<\/a>
1951<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n1952<\/strong> is a very warm, festive, red:
\n
\"\"<\/a>
1952<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n1953<\/strong> seems to have been popular, at least with whoever collected items for the scrapbooks.\u00a0 There were lots and lots of versions of the little caroler:
\n
\"\"<\/a>
1953<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nI kind of like 1956<\/strong>, too.\u00a0 Very sweet.
\n
\"\"<\/a>
1956<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n[1] San Jacinto Lung Association<\/a>, at the John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center<\/a>, Texas Medical Center Library.
\n[2] Christmas Seals<\/a>, at the American Lung Association<\/a>.
\n[3] Christmas Seals<\/a>, at Wikipedia<\/a>.
\n[4] Pulmonary tuberculosis<\/a>, at Baylor College of Medicine Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology<\/a>.
\n[5] History of Tuberculosis<\/a>, at Wikipedia<\/a>.
\n[6] Alphabetilately<\/a>.
\n[7] Saskatchewan Lung Association<\/a>.
\n[8] History of Tuberculosis<\/a>, at Wikipedia<\/a>.
\n[9] National Tuberculosis Association, on YouTube.
\n[10] Houston native Victoria Spivey<\/a>, on YouTube.
\n[11] Jimmie Rodgers<\/a>, on YouTube.
\n[12] History of Public Health (Tuberculosis<\/a>), King County<\/a>, Washington.
\n[13] Atlanta History Center<\/a>.
\n[14] 1946 Ford COE <\/a>on Flickr\/Bob Atwood.
\n[15] Tacoma Public Library<\/a>.
\n[16] Christmas Seals public service announcements<\/a>, on YouTube.
\n[17] Vivien Leigh<\/a>, on Wikipedia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant mcgovern@exch.library.tmc.edu You know I never pass up an opportunity to scan something. We received an image request early this week that sent me scurrying off to look into Institutional Collection 34, the San Jacinto Lung Association[1], a collection with which I had never before had occasion to work.\u00a0 Oh, my.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,9,30,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artifacts","category-images","category-institutional-collection","category-public-health"],"authors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}