Dr Hamilton, first-ever woman lecturer at Harvard
Smithsonian
After graduating from Michigan, Dr Hamilton interned at N.W Hospital for Women and Children, Minneapolis and then at the New England Hospital for Women & Children Boston. Hamilton had already decided on a career in research rather than clinical medicine, but she wanted some clinical experience. In 1893, Hamilton accepted a pathology research position at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Then she taught pathology at Women's Medical School of N.W Uni Chicago and was soon was appointed Pathology Prof there.
She lived for years at Hull-House Chicago, a settlement staffed by university graduates who helped immigrants and the poor, via social research and reform. Hull-House people investigated family income, school truancy, sanitation, TB and issues affecting community health and safety. And they helped organise Labour unions when many wealthy Americans opposed workers’ rights. And she later worked as a bacteriologist at Chicago’s Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases.
Hull-House, Chicago
In the 1902 summer holidays, Dr Hamilton found Chicago in a severe typhoid fever epidemic. So she needed to explain typhoid, identifying the ineffective sewage disposal in 19th Ward, outdoor toilets, broken plumbing, standing water and flies. Tests on flies captured near filthy toilets indicated the presence of the typhoid bacillus. But blame properly fell on broken watermains that spewed sewage into water pipes, despite Chicago Board of Health denials.
That same year, when the Women’s Medical School of N.W University closed, Alice became a bacteriologist at Chicago’s newly opened Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases. The U.S saw rapid industrialisation and by 1900 had become the world’s most industrialised nation. The growth occurred in mining, manufacturing, transport and commerce, enabled by cheap energy, better technology, growing transport, investment capital and cheap labour. But it also produced low wages, job insecurity, poor working conditions, industrial accidents & disease.
Industrial poisoning was problematic since it could take years to emerge. Most employees & employers were ignorant of the dangers from chemicals, and few factories employed doctors to monitor worker health. In any case, which workers would complain, risking their jobs?
Illinois' governor appointed Dr Hamilton to the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases (1908-10). Industrial toxicology was little understood, so the commissioners asked her to study diseases where high mortality rates were found: in painting trades, lead and enamelware industries, rubber production, explosives and munitions. The most widely used poisons were lead, arsenic, zinc and carbon monoxide.
From 1911-20, she became a special investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, examining the manufacture of white lead and lead oxide in paint pigments. The team visited factories, read hospital records and interviewed unionists to uncover lead poisoning cases. She discovered 70+ dangerous processes that caused high lead poisoning. During this time, Hamilton became a noted expert in industrial medicine. Harvard Uni quickly placed her on faculty in the School of Public Health in Industrial Medicine, making her the first-ever woman lecturer at Harvard. This made Dr Hamilton a famous expert in industrial medicine.
The Illinois report on industrial disease led to state legislation, Occupational Disease Law (1911), requiring employers to: end workers’ exposure to risky chemicals, offer monthly medical exams for workers in dangerous trades, & report diseases to the Dept of Factory Inspection. Soon Charles Neill, Comm. of Labour in Dept of Commerce asked her to do nationally what she’d done in the state, first in the lead trades, then in other poisonous trades.
Workers trimming and binding the felt hats
leading to mercury poisoning
Connecticuthistory
In WWI she also investigated the poisonous effects of manufacturing explosives on workers, as requested by National Research Council. Factories had sprung up to produce TNT, picric acid and mercury fulminate. Her reports on the dangers in war-industries led to the adoption of many safety procedures. After the war, Hamilton discussed mercury poisoning in the felt-hat industry, the mercury causing wild jerking of limbs, and mental illness. And workers who made matches were subject to an industrial disease that resulted from fumes of white or yellow phosphorous which pierced the jaw bone.
Hamilton’s impressive work was soon recognised abroad. From 1924 she served a 6-year term on the Health Committee of the League of Nations. She was invited by the Soviet Public Health Service, and toured a Moscow hospital that was the first-ever facility devoted to occupational disease. Appropriately she wrote Industrial Poisons in U.S (1925). And she published Industrial Toxicology (1934), studying aniline dye, carbon monoxide, mercury, benzene and other toxic chemicals for the Dept of Labour. Over the years, her many reports for the Federal government dramatised the high mortality rates for industrial workers, bringing major legislative changes.
Alice Hamilton wrote Industrial Toxicology re workplace safety, in 1934.
Radcliffe Institute
Dr Hamilton first encountered carbon disulfide years earlier when she had studied rubber making. Then in 1935, Hamilton conducted a study of viscose rayon manufacture. This new industry used two dangerous chemicals: 1] carbon disulfide, which poisoned the central nervous system, leading to mental disease, blindness and paralysis. And 2] hydrogen sulfide, a powerful asphyxiating toxin. Carbon disulfide received little American attention until Hamilton examined serious illnesses among U.S viscose rayon workers. The Dept of Labour appointed her Chief Medical Consultant, with her results published in Occupational Poisoning in the Viscose Rayon Industry 1940. What an amazing career.
Finally she retired to write her autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades (1943). Hamilton celebrated her 100th birthday in 1970, then passed away. Congress immediately passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
The guest writer Dr Joe, recomnends reading Alice Hamilton & Development of Occupational Medicine, 2002.
Smithsonian
After graduating from Michigan, Dr Hamilton interned at N.W Hospital for Women and Children, Minneapolis and then at the New England Hospital for Women & Children Boston. Hamilton had already decided on a career in research rather than clinical medicine, but she wanted some clinical experience. In 1893, Hamilton accepted a pathology research position at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Then she taught pathology at Women's Medical School of N.W Uni Chicago and was soon was appointed Pathology Prof there.
She lived for years at Hull-House Chicago, a settlement staffed by university graduates who helped immigrants and the poor, via social research and reform. Hull-House people investigated family income, school truancy, sanitation, TB and issues affecting community health and safety. And they helped organise Labour unions when many wealthy Americans opposed workers’ rights. And she later worked as a bacteriologist at Chicago’s Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases.
In the 1902 summer holidays, Dr Hamilton found Chicago in a severe typhoid fever epidemic. So she needed to explain typhoid, identifying the ineffective sewage disposal in 19th Ward, outdoor toilets, broken plumbing, standing water and flies. Tests on flies captured near filthy toilets indicated the presence of the typhoid bacillus. But blame properly fell on broken watermains that spewed sewage into water pipes, despite Chicago Board of Health denials.
That same year, when the Women’s Medical School of N.W University closed, Alice became a bacteriologist at Chicago’s newly opened Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases. The U.S saw rapid industrialisation and by 1900 had become the world’s most industrialised nation. The growth occurred in mining, manufacturing, transport and commerce, enabled by cheap energy, better technology, growing transport, investment capital and cheap labour. But it also produced low wages, job insecurity, poor working conditions, industrial accidents & disease.
Industrial poisoning was problematic since it could take years to emerge. Most employees & employers were ignorant of the dangers from chemicals, and few factories employed doctors to monitor worker health. In any case, which workers would complain, risking their jobs?
Illinois' governor appointed Dr Hamilton to the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases (1908-10). Industrial toxicology was little understood, so the commissioners asked her to study diseases where high mortality rates were found: in painting trades, lead and enamelware industries, rubber production, explosives and munitions. The most widely used poisons were lead, arsenic, zinc and carbon monoxide.
From 1911-20, she became a special investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, examining the manufacture of white lead and lead oxide in paint pigments. The team visited factories, read hospital records and interviewed unionists to uncover lead poisoning cases. She discovered 70+ dangerous processes that caused high lead poisoning. During this time, Hamilton became a noted expert in industrial medicine. Harvard Uni quickly placed her on faculty in the School of Public Health in Industrial Medicine, making her the first-ever woman lecturer at Harvard. This made Dr Hamilton a famous expert in industrial medicine.
The Illinois report on industrial disease led to state legislation, Occupational Disease Law (1911), requiring employers to: end workers’ exposure to risky chemicals, offer monthly medical exams for workers in dangerous trades, & report diseases to the Dept of Factory Inspection. Soon Charles Neill, Comm. of Labour in Dept of Commerce asked her to do nationally what she’d done in the state, first in the lead trades, then in other poisonous trades.
leading to mercury poisoning
Connecticuthistory
In WWI she also investigated the poisonous effects of manufacturing explosives on workers, as requested by National Research Council. Factories had sprung up to produce TNT, picric acid and mercury fulminate. Her reports on the dangers in war-industries led to the adoption of many safety procedures. After the war, Hamilton discussed mercury poisoning in the felt-hat industry, the mercury causing wild jerking of limbs, and mental illness. And workers who made matches were subject to an industrial disease that resulted from fumes of white or yellow phosphorous which pierced the jaw bone.
Hamilton’s impressive work was soon recognised abroad. From 1924 she served a 6-year term on the Health Committee of the League of Nations. She was invited by the Soviet Public Health Service, and toured a Moscow hospital that was the first-ever facility devoted to occupational disease. Appropriately she wrote Industrial Poisons in U.S (1925). And she published Industrial Toxicology (1934), studying aniline dye, carbon monoxide, mercury, benzene and other toxic chemicals for the Dept of Labour. Over the years, her many reports for the Federal government dramatised the high mortality rates for industrial workers, bringing major legislative changes.
Radcliffe Institute
Dr Hamilton first encountered carbon disulfide years earlier when she had studied rubber making. Then in 1935, Hamilton conducted a study of viscose rayon manufacture. This new industry used two dangerous chemicals: 1] carbon disulfide, which poisoned the central nervous system, leading to mental disease, blindness and paralysis. And 2] hydrogen sulfide, a powerful asphyxiating toxin. Carbon disulfide received little American attention until Hamilton examined serious illnesses among U.S viscose rayon workers. The Dept of Labour appointed her Chief Medical Consultant, with her results published in Occupational Poisoning in the Viscose Rayon Industry 1940. What an amazing career.
Finally she retired to write her autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades (1943). Hamilton celebrated her 100th birthday in 1970, then passed away. Congress immediately passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
The guest writer Dr Joe, recomnends reading Alice Hamilton & Development of Occupational Medicine, 2002.
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20 comments:
Did this talented woman ever marry? I wouldn't like to live to 100, all by myself. And I wouldn't like to be often moving between New York, Chicago, Boston and other cities all alone.
Deb
in my opinion, she didn't marry because she had to choose between her career and her personal life. However she was very lucky in one sense in that during her 22 years of residency at Hull House in Chicago, she was surrounded by excellent colleagues.
She, and many others like her, are the true celebrities of our lives, not the often vacuous 'entertainers' who make obscene amounts of money.
jabblog
I know Alice Hamilton wasn't even nominated for a Nobel Prize, proving that women need to sing well and have naked boobs to be famous. And rich.
Dear Helen! Thank you telling about famous Dr. Alice Hamilton .
Irina
I hope Harvard's School of Industrial Medicine is named in Dr Hamilton's honour. She was dedicated and brilliant!
One of many underappreciated and amazing women. What a different country the US was then, moving forward at a rapid pace in medicine, research and improvements for workers. Now, maybe not so much.
Andrew
Dr Hamilton was very successful with the universities, hospitals and science labs. Even a lot of politicians wanted to look after their communities.
But I don't think the factory owners wanted to let her in, to inspect their machinery, chemicals and sewers. Even inside the factories, owners hid evidence of the dangers to workers' health. I presume the owners feared increasing costs and decreasing profits.
Paving the way for every other female doctor, thank you.
What a remarkable women who deserves far more recognition than she ever received. Her research must have gone a long way in making the work place a safer place.
What a brilliant woman she was, Hels. Very interesting read.
River
The impact of lead, mercury and zinc in particular MUST have been suspected before. But Dr Hamilton showed that female doctors could be very well educated, persistent in their research and dedicated to workers' health. She and her colleagues saved lives!
Fun60
Her results were formally reported to the relevant Health authorities, of course. But she also reviewed each project in academic journals, spreading her reputation in the U.S and aboard.
Margaret
She was tireless!
Back in the day, I presented my research findings to experienced professionals at regular meetings, and to annual national conferences. I am glad I did it, but it was exhausting.
You find the most interesting people.
peppy
Sometimes I have lectured or written about special people and remember their details well eg Leonard Cohen. But the author of this post, Dr Joe, suggested Dr Hamilton.
Obrigado por sempre nos surpreendem. Obrigado por cada aula de história. Que tenhamos mais mulheres assim.
Luiz
may we have many more women like Dr Alice Hamilton, and her team :)
I'm surprised I never heard of DR. Hamilton in my microbiological studies. Wow, what a lady. I've added that book to my reading list because she sounds like she had a fascinating life. And she gave back a lot to society too. :)
Erika
I think if Dr Hamilton had been a male, and if she had won a Nobel Prize for Medicine, you most certainly would have heard her name. After you read the book, drop a line here, if you would.
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