The town grew quickly, but did not have the infrastructure to manage the influx of people and public health issues. There were open sewers, trash-filled rivers, cows and pigs that freely walked the streets, and carcasses of dead cats and rats in the streets. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad, tuberculosis patients came to Colorado beginning in the 1870s for the dry, sunny climate and high altitudes. Colorado became the "sanatorium to the world" and the disease spread throughout the city. By the 1880s, 10,000 people in Denver had tuberculosis; this was one-third of the city's population. Dr. Frederick J. Bancroft (who created Denver's public health system) claimed that Denver was one of the dirtiest cities in the country. The entire city was not clean, but ethnic enclaves for the Chinese, Italians, and the Irish were worse. Public health became another excuse to oust Chinamen from the city. Further: Frances Wisebart Jacobs § Denver's Jewish Hospital Association
