This episode of stuff. You miss than history glasses, brought to you by W W, formerly wait watchers. They have launched the new my Debbie Debbie programme. It is their most groundbreaking and customize proven weight loss plan. I first join W W because I was really looking for something that would help me be more encouraged to make healthier food choices, and the programme has really done that and now, when you join them, I W W program. You take a personalized assessment that includes are eating habits and you're behaviors, and they match you up with the right plan for you. So joint debate today and unlock your customers weight loss plan that can make losing weight easier for you had on overdue Debbie Debbie dot com, that's w w dot com to join Debbie Debbie today, with a limited time, offer Welcome to stuff you mean history class of production of I hurried use how stuff works

hello among under the Comcast, I'm Holly fry and I'm Tracery Welfare Tracy. Today's episode is going to delve into the start of the study of occupational disease and the woman behind that beginning, but important field is in it's one of those interesting things that we see as so important today but a hundred years ago, not so much occupational health has also been affecting people for much much more

longer than it has existed as a field which, yes, it is one of those things that even while I was researching this episode, I found myself going right quite hidden. Anybody study this clear, still pretty obvious cause and effect for some others serve one yeah, but by a number of previous episode, topics are gonna get mentioned as we go through this story. Yes, Sir doctor I was Hamilton was a trailblazer in science and medicine and she dedicated her life to improving the workplace standards for labourers in an effort to reduce illnesses that came Ardley from working with toxic chemicals, and this episode was requested by our listener, Emily, who actually sent us a book to kick start search which is very kind, and it's actually really fun book. So thank you Emily. So, on February, twenty seventh eighteen, sixty nine Alice Hamilton, was born in New York City forbearance. Montgomery, Hamilton and Gertrude Pond. The family had really strong roots and

Fort Wayne Indiana, that was where her grandfather had been a land speculator and entrepreneur after emigrating from Ireland to the United States, and he had bought and sold a lot of property in Fort Wayne yeah. I read one account that basically said like almost any piece of properties. You stand on in Fort Wayne today at some point passed through his hands in terms of ownership, Alice was born in New York because her mother Gertrude had wanted to go to have the baby at her family home, which was in New York, but when I was still very, very tiny see you in a mother went back home to Fort Wayne to live on the property that they have there, which is family, called old House, and the old house itself had been built in eighteen. Forty and Alice once described it as having been built quote for beauty, space dignity, not for comfort and convenience. The family had staff

and so that inconvenience was borne by them. But Alice was very aware of the inherent wastefulness in building room so large that there had to be someone constantly tending to the fires and having so many stories before running water. That maids had to continually regarding water of flights of Stairs Montgomery Gertrude and Chile. Didn't live in old house, although they spend a lot of their time there. They had a slightly smaller home on the same property. Called White House and home called Red House was where Alice's uncle lived. The one thing that Alice size a great benefit and those overly large homes was the ability to fight, some quiet space to be alone and get away from the bustle of a very large family Alice and her sisters Edith Margaret Nora and her one baby Brother Arthur who came along a little later, we're home schooled by their parents,

Gertrude Pond Hamilton thought that the hours of public schools were unreasonable and her father Montgomery thought that the subjects that they taught at those schools were far too boring for his children, Edith, incidentally, went on to become a well known author and classicist, teeming recognise the naming of Hamilton and the sisters had all been born pretty closely within six years of each other, and they were very, very close to one another. Their brother Arthur who went by Quince was born much later when Alice was seventeen Alice, described this upbringing being taught at home. Not really having friends outside of their family as one that turned them all into book. Worms eventually quote and sense. We saw so little of any children outside our own family. The people we met in books became real to us, but to be clear, there were other children around eleven cousins lived on the property where old House, another home, sat some sort of a job

I ain't family compound because of here- and it wasn't until alice- was a teenager of seventeen that she received any formal education when she attended Miss Porter School in farming in Connecticut, and that was, and still is, a private preparatory school. In Connecticut Analysis time, there was the prelude to entering the University of Michigan Medical. Who all hours but that the school was awful and she selected courses that would either be fairly easy charity had a lot of linguistics education from her parents. Just took a lot of that or she picked courses for which he could just memorize the needed,

without really digesting understanding it. But that meant that when she decided to go in some Madison, she was woefully lacking. She needed to take extra classes to get properly prepared for it. She had to take physics, chemistry, biology and anatomy courses after she finished at Miss porters, once those were complete she enrolled at the University of Michigan, even though this was decades after Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to grow, first woman to graduate from medical school and the United States. It was still pretty unusual for a woman to pursue a career as a physician, but it turned out that Alice really loved both the freedom and the challenge of being on our own and learning so much about clinical and lab work eventually decided she wanted to do research instead of practice, medicine and when she finished medical school in eighteen. Ninety three

she worked as an intern in Minneapolis Minnesota at the hospital for women and children, and after two months there she moved to her next training position. This time at the New England, hospital for women and children is located near Boston. Her education continued after that she studied in Leipzig and Munich over the course of a year, because Germany was really where her chosen fields of bacteria, ology and pathology were most advanced missiles, a tricky thing for her to negotiate, because german schools were not opens a women at that time, Alison her sister Edith

what Germany, with her hand, to promise that they would be invisible to the male students after gaining asylum level of knowledge in Europe. Alice came back to the United States to attend Johns Hopkins University for a year. Once all of that schooling was done, Hamilton made the switch in rules from student to educator than she began, teaching at the northwestern universities, women's medical school. In addition to her teaching, she also join Chicago's Hull house and moved in there. That is the settlement House founded by Jean Adams, that we discussed in our episode about Adams was him and has actually mention very briefly in that episode and as part of her life at Hull House, Alice founded a well baby clinic for the community, and she also me the connection between typhoid, spread in poor sewage disposal during the nineteen. Oh two epidemic in Chicago Hull House

a big impact on Alice and her ongoing work. There really shaped her worldview. She once famously said of it quote. Life in a settlement does several things to you, among others that teaches you that education and culture have little to do with real wisdom, the wisdom that comes from experiences- and it was during this work at Hull house and offering medical treatment and assistance to the poor families in the community. That Alice started to see first hand, just how closely linked disease was to poverty, and she started to realize just how dangerous working conditions were for the poor, who are often immigrants with little power to improve their workplace. Or to move in the less hazardous careers in nineteen o eight. She wrote her first paper on the subject of occupational disease and her works. Whartons and her level of knowledge on the topic were pretty quickly acknowledged. This is a time when workers, the United

where routinely handling toxic substances with little to no protection. We have talked on the podcast before about things like fussy jaw and mercury poisoning and those were not uncommon among poor laborers, but in the United States. There really wasn't any formal work being done to study these kinds of issues in the workplace, and we're gonna talk about the next stage in Hamiltons Career, which came because of the recognition that she achieved for that early work in studying occupational disease, but first will pause and have a little sponsor break. This episode is Are you buy Mazda and the Maza See Ex thirty a truly remarkable suv, the six thirty aside, to be agile and the city, while still having the interior space and utility to go anywhere at any time, encouraging and active lifestyle then one thing Mazda has done is design a vehicle that is meant to enhance your experience of moving through an environment not to shut you away from it. There are fewer destroy,

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Mazda vehicle. Lineup visit your local area, Mazda dealer. Today in nineteen ten ATLAS, Hamilton was appointed to lead and occupational These commission, which was formed by Illinois, Governor Charles Demeaning and the commission, was established to study industrial disease. It was the first of its kind in the United States, led arsenic, carbon monoxide, brass cyanides. Urban time were all to be studied over the course of a year per the governors Office and Hamilton. Mission to being the leader of this initiative focused on lead in particular, and though she started researching the connection between industry.

And disease pioneering the field of occupational epidemiology. She later wrote quote it was while I was living in hull house at working in bacteriological research that the opportunity came to me to investigate the dangerous trades of Illinois, not those where violent accidents occurred, but those with the less spectacular hazard of sickness from some industrial poison. It was avoided of exploration, that we undertook our little group of positions and student assistance for nobody in Illinois New. Even then, where we should make our investigation beyond a few notorious led trades. American medical authorities had never taken industrial diseases seriously. The american medical associations had never held a meeting on the subject, and while Europe

in journals? Were full of articles on industrial poisoning. The number published an american medical journals up to nineteen ten could be counted on one's fingers and the work on this project was extensive. Doktor Hamilton and her team spoke with laborers and pharmacists about factory conditions and instances of lead poisoning. They also reviewed medical records and hospitals and they went to factories to see for themselves what the conditions were like You might suspect this line of investigation was not exactly welcomed by some of the people in power in the industries that she wanted to research in her autobiography. She describe some of the attitudes about illness in injury. The she encountered quote a relic back. Some striking pictures come to me of that anarchic period. One is the picture The works manager of a big white led plant, a gentleman of breeding and something of a philanthropist. He is looking

me indignantly and exclaiming. Why? That sounds as if you think that when a man gets lead poisoning in my plant, I ought to be held responsible, Another is that of a hungarian woman at Hull house telling me of a terrible accident in a steel mill on South Shore in which her husband had been injured. He and the other victims. Being held incommunicado in the company hospital? No one was allowed to see them. She knew nothing except tat. Her husband was not done yeah she's a lot of accounts, if you read her out of her argovie, there are many similar stories that she witnessed alike. Hamilton's writing on the issue she was researching at this time mentions the various people who were ignorant indifferent in allowing dangerous circumstances to continue to be the norm in factories from the owners to the foreman to the company doctors. And even the workers she wrote quote, the employers could, if they wished, shut their eyes

eyes to the dangers their workmen faced for nobody held them responsible, while the workers accepted the risks with fatalistic submissive news as part of the price, one must pay for being poor. She also catalogue the very excuses she was given by employers and her investigations about illness and disease among their workers. Some tick racist possessed and claiming that the various immigrant groups were filthy and never washed. Others claimed that various illnesses weren't the result of anything related to their work, but we're cause. By alcoholism among the employees, she wrote quote: there is no form of industry, poisoning, which I have not heard some man a tribute to whisky even oh Hamilton and her colleagues had been appointed to a commission by the governor. They didn't have any authority did just walk into plants and start asking questions, and there is also no real set of guidelines or procedure for how they do this work, so they simply started looking for themselves for places. They would

fall under the umbrella of their mandate, and then they would just asked to enter and look around and speak with some one in authority and Alice does mention in her writing that she was always greeted with kindness and that in some cases, foreman or factory owners, they have their own worries about employee health and they were actually really glad to have someone helping them figure out the problem. This commission was intended to be a whistle blowing operation. Thou Alice wasn't supposed to identify any of the factories in her reports by name or give details that cut. Then a five m and she submitted their reports in the manner that was requested. She wasn't completely comfortable with that, though. She worried that people weren't being helped in a direct way, while government agencies reviewed the findings of the report. So she started a habit of telling the man in charge of the factories where she found servants exactly what she felt was wrong. She gave these men her own recommendations for the simple steps they might take to improve conditions and lay

Here she wrote about how surprised she was that this informal quote primitive method actually worked in one case she had visited. A white led works. There was opened with the intent of being safe, but then there has been a protocol in place to remove waste materials from production and there were piles of it around the factory and she spoke to the manager. But he was not very enthused about told what to do. The plant owner wasn't really an option. He was elderly and not really actively involved in running the factory, but then She remembered that she actually knew the owners daughter. The two women had gone to school together and so by reaching through that Channel Alice, was able to explain to her former schoolmate problems going on in the works.

Courage, a little bit of change, and that worked. The factory not only changed its operating procedures to include removal of the waste products on a regular basis. Leadership actually asked Alice to stop by periodically and inspect things for them and just touch base and she continued to develop Can ships go through these kinds of ways with managers and foremen is often as possible so that she could keep their discussions about safety cordial and she continue to leverage any other means she could to a night change in ways that her go Why couldn't really do ultimately now? The report that Alice compiled with her colleagues did have significant impact. They made a clear case showing, Illnesses were often the result of on the job conditions and one thousand nine hundred and eleven, the state of Illinois passed legislation that required three things of employ

There's one they had to follow new safety guidelines to minimize the risk of occupational disease to if they employed workers and so called dangerous trades. They had to provide monthly health screening for those employees. And three they had to report any illnesses to the Department of Factory inspection in nineteen eleven after her work with the state of Illinois. Commission conclude in Alice Hamilton was asked to serve as a special investigator for the Federal Department of Labour Bureau of Labour Statistics because of the reputation she had earned for her work at this level and she served in that role for almost a decade and continued her steady and investigation of lead. In industry, as well as rubber viscose re on and other substances, Hamilton continued to barriers and her career, and we will get to another of those right after we pause for one of the sponsors that keeps us going. Miles and Jack from work. We recorded a pike has together in the master,

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information on Malta and the first ever six thirty had over two Maza USA dot com such Iheart or better, yet go check it out in person at a local area. Masilo. Today, during reform, one Hamilton turned her intentions to the industry's associated with work for investigation. She studied factories where munitions are made and she submitted reports outlining the dangers of the various chemicals involved and how those dangers might be addressed for worker safety. Many safety procedures were established because of the work she did during those years. She also commented at one point that she felt like, because the government was so quick to act on those recommendations. It It gave her work a level of credibility that it hadn't really had before nearing the end of her work and the Bureau of Labour Statistics Hamilton was offered opposition teaching at Harvard Medical School as an assistant, professor of industrial medicine, that made her the first woman on the facts,

There are some irony in that appointment. The school wasn't accepting women as students. At the time when she was interviewed on a subject. Alice Hamilton was always quick to point out that she shouldn't have been the first woman on the faculty issues. Also, yes, I am. We should have a new in this before and, despite the attention that her groundbreaking position game the school she, denied a number of benefits that were available to other faculty members, for example, she wasn't allowed into the faculty club and she wasn't allowed to participate in the commencement procession and should not receive any football tickets All benefits that any other faculty member would have had, but as part of her, hearing negotiation, Doktor Hamilton wanted to teach only one semester each year, in that way, the remainder of the year would be spent on her work at Hull house and on her doing research into toxicology and nineteen

for Alice was appointed to the League of Nations. Health committee made her the only woman chosen for it that same year, She was invited to the Soviet Union to offer her expertise on the management and treatment of occupational diseases. There Hamilton continued to use her various positions to work, not just for the betterment of occupational health, but also for social reform in health care. Her work with impoverish communities continued to drive her efforts, including work and epidemic disease, infant mortality reduction and addiction, and she also advocated for family planning at a time when that was not a very welcome

big because she saw how much women and impoverished communities really didn't have education on the matter and also in some cases their health was put at risk by having pregnancy after pregnancy after pregnancy. She also worked in the interest of women's labour rights, even when that position stood in opposition to legislation that was introduced for equal rights. Hamilton was concerned that the wording of the bills introduced for equality in the work. Place with diminished protections for women in the workplace. So she became an advocate for women in labor industries like textile mills, food packaging and processing plants, as well as hospitality, and one thousand nine hundred and fifty two she became an advocate for the equal Rights amendment once she felt that equality legislation wouldn't diminish protection spray. Work and part of the reason she was so adamant about. Those protections was that she had collected data that showed that there were ways which women were more vulnerable than men when it came to certain issues of industrial poisoning. Her research into

the women were more susceptible, particularly to lead poisoning and all industrial poisonings had, the added complication of potentially causing birth defects. Indoor sterility in nineteen twenty five, she wrote the first text on toxicology, titled, industrial reasons and the United States nine years later and nineteen thirty four, she wrote another textbook industrial toxicology. The year after industrial toxicology was first published Hamiltons time at Harvard ended because she reached mandatory retirement age and the sixteen years that she was there. She was never promoted beyond title of assisted professor and instead had been employed on a series of three year contracts that renewed over and over. After leaving Harvard Hamilton. He was sixty. Six at the time have actually retired from her life's work. She moved a headline Connecticut with her sister Marguerite, who, like all four of the Hamilton sisters, had not married and Alice continued to consult on the topic of toxicology.

In industrial settings, including acting as an adviser to New York State Industrial Commissioner, France's Perkins even outside insulting Doktor Hamilton stayed busy and nineteen forty three He wrote her autobiography exploring the dangerous trades she revised or textbook industrial toxicology and nineteen, forty nine, when she was eighty and as Joseph Mccarthy start up the second red scare. In the U S and the late forties an early fifties. She spoke out against it. At that point. She was an hour eighties, that activism can And you'd into her nineties when she wrote to President Kennedy to urge him to get american troops out of Vietnam. On February twenty, seventh nineteen sixty nine Hamilton celebrated her one hundredth.

The following year. She died on September 22nd, one thousand nine hundred and seventy after having a stroke three months after her death on December 29th, one thousand nine hundred and seventy the occupational Safety and Health ACT of nineteen. Seventy became law. Its opening paragraph reads an act to assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women by authorizing enforcement of the standards developed into the act by assisting and encouraging the states and their efforts to ensure safe and healthful working conditions by providing for research information education and training in the field of occupational safety and health and for other purposes. Yes, so that was kind of the combination of her life's work and she just missed seeing it happened by a few months today. The centre for Disease Control and prevention give out the Alice, be Hamilton awards for occupational safety and else and on her birthday of nineteen, eighty seven, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Ridge Avenue Facility and said

Natty Ohio was dedicated to her memory. The hours Hamilton Laboratory for Occupational safety and health two thousand to the american chemicals society designated Alice, Hamilton and her work in industrial medicine, a national historic chemical, landmark and closed wanted to offer up a fairly famous quote from Doktor Alice Hamilton's autobiography in it reads quote: I chose met and not because I was scientifically minded for- I was deeply ignorant of science. I chose it because, as a doctor I could go anywhere, I pleased too far off lands or to city slums and be quite sure I could be of use anywhere as such. A great sentiments net is an ally of her heaps me to one of the things that I think is really interesting about. Her story is that, if I thought of it shows how, when there is progress in

field. It's not like there's a switch that gets flipped where everything is fixed. Now, like the radium girls were after this and like, I think she was part of some of the investigation of that and that was well after Illinois had passed laws related to this lake. It's it's an example of sort of the trajectory of things that that take a while and, of course, there are plenty of occupational issues that still exist today. You are in her autobiography which, but we mention was written in the forties there's a funny moment where she talks about how lake to her it's almost amusing, that people started using like the the safety first wording when she's

when I started doing this. That would have bed like a math Emma. Nobody would have said those words, so she was seeing the progress and could appreciate her impact, even if she did not care to see that the Ocean law Damn finally signed into reality. That lies older than I thought it was near, and it's one of those things I think people don't. I was no lake, the origin point for ocean like we use. That acronym is a word all the time, but when you really diabolic. Someone had to go and investigate who sees things integration that there was a very clear link between some of the work that was happening in some of the illnesses that were resulting in document all of it, so that there could be a clear case made.

And it was largely you know her instigating it in the United States at least there was, as we mention, of going on in other parts of the globe where they had already begun. That kind of research by Alexander Ensure Lover. I also noticed that case anyone's curious. When you look at biographies of her, she isn't very often addressed as Doktor Alice Hamilton and I think that's because she didn't go into practice as a medical doctor, but instead took this research route, but she did finnish medical school and was an empty, so we can switch so little bit and included it periodically. Just remind me, but I don't think she went by Doktor Hamilton on the regular in her day to day life. They have some listener. Male take us out ideal. It is actually about an episode that you did, but it's a piece of physical male side

I would read it see you get to hear it since you're, not here in Atlanta. It starts hello, Holly and Tracy. I was delighted to hear your episode of Juliet Gordon low I've been a girl scout troop leader for three years, but have been involved for about eight years. I have two daughters and girl scouts. It is a major part of our lives. I love the programme and I see my girls grow and develop through the various levels of scouting girl. Scouting has also allowed me my girls to travel with our troops through selling cookies. We have travelled to places that we could never have gone on our own family budget. This was such a fun episode for me to listen to you as a girl scout leader. Part of girl, scouting is teaching the girls. The history. How girl scout started and who Juliet Gordon Low was. I have learned many of the stories you shared about Juliet life, but it was also You seem to your other tidbits. They get left out. I loved you Gordon low in what she started, I'm instead

by her life, because she was in her fifty he's never truly framing out what she loved, as somebody who just turned forty and still figuring out what life has in store. For me, I looked to her to see that big things still await you. Even when you are older, I love that sentiment is well. I have enclosed a prince of my favorite, Juliet Gordon low quote, and I love this quote because of all the work I do with young girls and teenagers through the girl scouts. I also think it is the perfect quote for history podcast. Thank you so much for the research you do in the entertaining episodes you and your team produce. I love your podcast. I've listened for years, and I've always wanted to send you something, I'm glad. I finally have the perfect reason to write in chair yours and girl, scouting Samantha and she also rights PS, Tracy, once a girl scout, always a girl scout. One of our sayings

and she wrote centres to Prince. They just have a cue quote. This is the work of today is the history of tomorrow and we are its makers. We love it. You thank you so much Samantha, because we agree. Julia Gordon lows breakthrough in the scouts. Do a lot of good work Am I really really like the beautiful again the idea that you can find your life's calling it any aims. Meat. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at history, pike, ass to how to work start com. You can also find us put much everywhere and social media as missed in history and missed in history. Dot com is a website where you can come and see. Listen to every episode. That's ever existed. Have you like to subscribe to the podcast. We would like you to subscribe to the park as you can do, that I mean I hurt radio app Apple podcast or wherever it is. You listen to podcast. Stuffy must, in history, glasses, a production of Iheart radios

Stuff works, for my part, have for my how radio visit thy heart, radio, apple pie, guests or wherever you listen to your favorite, shows everybody. So this episode of swift, blue mind sponsored by the all New Mazda, see Ex thirty, which actually just got to test. Dr recently, in the beautiful mountains of southern california- and I will say, so we ve told you on the show before were not really car guys. We don't know a lot about cars, I'm sort of a automobile philistine, but from this auto Philistines hard I will say this was a really wonderful card to drive. I truly enjoyed cruising around the mountains thing. He was very smooth

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