These glass slides represent the period of American history before the mass implementation of the tuberculosis vaccine, which was invented in the early 1920s. During this period, tuberculosis was a real and present public health risk, and sanatoriums were struggling to support themselves financially. 

In 1907, Emily Bissell, an active member of the Red Cross, designed Christmas seals to raise money to fight tuberculosis. The University of Virginia Historical Collections at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library provides this backstory from their digital exhibit on Bissell’s work

Bissell got the idea for a sale of Christmas Seals from an article written by a Danish-American journalist and social worker named Jacob Riis. In his article, Riis referred to a successful sale of Christmas seals in 1904 in Denmark that raised $20,000 in the fight againsttuberculosis. Bissell agreed with Riis’s suggestion that America do the same. She borrowed money from friends to print the first 50,000 Seals, got permission from the Wilmington postmaster to sell them in the post office lobby, and sold the first Christmas Seal on December 7, 1907.

(credit: American Theatre Architecture Archive, Theatre Historical Society of America)