As the second decade of the twentieth century wound to a close, the memory of a world stalked by infectious disease had dimmed. People had become complacent, almost smug, about disease and death. It was a time when death had nearly lost its sting, an era when the miracles of medicine were portrayed as almost a new religion. And it was a time when death became separate from everyday life. The Ladies’ Home Journal proudly declared that the parlor, where the dead had been laid out for viewing, was now to be called the “living room,” a room for the living, not the dead.
