How mail handlers used to fumigate the mail

[Still Waters]

Since the dawn of written communications, missives sent by card or letter have been the source of both joy and pain for recipients. During times of epidemics, however, the mail is viewed with extra wariness.

“The mail is something you welcome in times of normalcy, but just like any other kind of outside influence, it’s something that has been subjected to suspicion when there are times of strife, and when there’s an epidemic,” says Lynn Heidelbaugh, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum. Recipients worry whether the mail might bring contagion, “purely because it may have arrived from elsewhere and that elsewhere has been reporting infectious disease,” she says.

That’s as true today as it was in the late 19th century, when—before sanitizing sprays and disinfectant wipes—American post offices responded to persistent yellow fever epidemics with perforating paddles used in the fumigation of the mail.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/mail-handlers-used-poke-holes-envelopes-battle-germs-and-viruses-180975020/