[The isolation hospital on Katten in Bergen].

In 1864 the Board of Health in Bergen, Norway, feared that an epidemic of smallpox might break out in the city. A house on the bastion Katten (Norwegian for "the cat") on the Fredriksberg fortress was adapted and made a provisional smallpox hospital. Later on it also served as a cholera hospital during a minor cholera epidemic in 1873, and as an isolation hospital for patients suffering from scarlet fever. The hospital housed only five to seven patients and two nurses. The doctor and hospital orderlies were isolated in an adjacent house. The Board of Health presented several plans for enlarging the hospital. Only in 1891 was the hospital on Katten replaced by a new and larger isolation hospital in another part of the city (Sandviken). At first, the Board of Health introduced rigid isolation regulations which were difficult to satisfy. When the pathogenic bacteria were discovered and the spread of infection was better understood, the view on isolation and other measures became more rational.