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Nurses working for the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service in New York City took these snapshots, which show their lives and the lives of the families they cared for in the 1930s.

3 buildings in rural setting, “Junk Shop” painted on building at right, electricity pole at left.

“A woman with leprosy lived in the middle house. She later had to be sent to a leper colony.”

The United States had only one leper colony, at Carville Louisiana. Later, researchers confirmed that leprosy is only moderately contagious.

Courtesy U.S. National Library of Medicine