70 RüdigerKunow
travel of people harboring deadly germs represents a real public health
challenge.(Markel,Germs9,22)^21It is striking but certainly no accident that in the United States the
juncture of biology and mobility became an issue and the cause of
intense affective reactions at exactly the moment when mass
immigration was being increasingly perceived as a threat to the
traditionalAmericanwayoflife.Theinstallationofhealthinspectionsat
the gateways of immigration such as New York or San Francisco
harbors occurred at the time that it did, in the late nineteenth century,
afterimmigrationfromEuropeandAsiahadbeengoingonatsometime
and was beginning to be felt as a threat to the health of the American
nation, health here understood both in its literal and metaphorical
meanings. At that time, fears concerning the biology of migrant bodies,
more especially their "physiological backpack"(Markel,Germs26) as
carrying possibly nefarious diseases, were, as I will be showing below,
becoming a popular idiom for expressing national/istic fantasies of
Americanness, "whiteness," or the hale and hearty body of the nation.
Inspectionsofthephysicalconditionofincomingmigrantswerethusas
much the expression of a "medicalized nativism" (Kraut, Silent
Travelers3) as an act of governmental public health policy (Galusca
142-45.; Markel,Germs5-6, 9-10). Accordingly, when the Ellis Island
inspection station did open on March 3, 1891, it served as a "national
laboratory" (Galusca 146), not just of preventive health care, but rather
one where questions of identity, belonging, admission, etc. were
empirically tested and defined. In this fashion, Ellis Island became a
truly paradoxical site which reinstated even if under medical auspices
the very borders which the official "give me your huddled, your poor"
immigration ideology of the day was disavowing. Instead, "belonging
tookabiologicalturn"(Wald,Contagious30).
(^21) Markelisherereflectingalong-establishedscholarlyconsensus.Forexample,
inspeakingaboutthecausesofviralinfection,StephenS.Morsehasthistosay:
"Inevitably, viral traffic is enhanced by humantraffic. Highways and the
subsequenthumanmigrationtocities,especiallyintropicalareas,canintroduce
once-remote viruses to larger populations. On a global scale, similar
opportunities are offered by rapid air travel" (82). His views were endorsed by
WorldHealthOrganization(WHO).