Isolation Rooms, Cold Arbour Hospital, Oxford, Oxfordshire
This picture was taken in the scarlet fever block of the Oxford City Isolation Hospital, later known as Cold Arbour Hospital. It shows one ward divided into three separate rooms, each being separated from the other by a large sheet of glass. At the start of the 20th century, before the invention of antibiotics, there were several infectious diseases that affected many people’s daily lives. The three main ones that required treatment in isolation hospitals were Tuberculosis (TB), Scarlet Fever & Polio.
