On April 29, 1878, the United States Congress passed the Act to Prevent the Introduction of Contagious or Infectious Diseases into the United States, known colloquially as the National Quarantine Act. The act was soon signed into law by President Rutherford B. Hayes. Its purpose was to prevent the introduction of infectious diseases into United States ports coming from foreign countries. During the nineteenth century the issue of disease and its spread became acute in the United States. Cities were growing too rapidly to maintain standardized sewage systems and sanitary conditions. Improved and expanding rail service connected portions of the nation that had once been isolated from one another. Moreover, advances in steamship technology were bringing nations closer together around the world, and the United States’ reputation as an immigrant nation made it an attractive destination. By the 1880s steamships from Europe were averaging fifteen knots (about seventeen miles per hour), making the journey from northwestern Europe to New York last a mere two weeks. Such rapid transportation meant that infected people could arrive at a port and disembark before symptoms of a disease appeared. Although scientists and medical researchers were beginning to understand the role of germs in infectious disease, there were no antibiotics with which to treat people. Communities and nations could do nothing more than isolate sick people from the rest of the population until a disease had run its course—or until those infected died.