Medical officials and public school administrators worked together to enforce a mandate that students receive the smallpox vaccine in 1855.
A vaccination campaign for schoolchildren in Schuylkill County in the 1850s

Medical officials and public school administrators worked together to enforce a mandate that students receive the smallpox vaccine in 1855.
In 1910, an epidemic of scarlet fever spun out of control in the Coal Region community of Lykens and left a trail of bodies in its wake.
Private Samuel Veatch used poetry to record the final words of comrades at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg in January 1862.
"Three hundred miles of funeral processions, and the tears and groans that accompany these sad partings."
Keiser was fighting a potentially deadly illness and evading capture by advancing Confederate soldiers.