“Living in a working-class quarter, coming in contact with laborers and their wives, I could not fail to hear tales of the dangers that workingmen faced. . . .” – Alice Hamilton
In 1909 occupational diseases were a growing concern. The preliminary investigations of the Commission on Occupational Diseases found that workers in occupations as varied as the metal industries, mining, leatherworks, mills and bakeries, woodworking, distilleries and others were exposed to working conditions and toxic substances that all had a damaging effect on their health. The members of the Commission reported “It is well known that much of the sickness and mortality now caused by various trades are not fated or necessary. Much of the evil can be prevented or mitigated by methods already known to science and embodied in the best regulations and laws….We do well to conserve the force of steam and mine, but the health and vigor of our people deserve much more attention and care.” Governor Deneen agreed that this important work had only just begun and asked for appropriations to continue the work of the Commission.
This report discusses the branches of industry in which “conditions deleterious to the health of the workers has been found to prevail”. It outlines some of the dangers to which workmen were exposed and offers suggestions for improvement of those conditions and led to the 1911 report.
The 1911 Report contains the findings of the Commission, after an investigation that lasted a little over nine months. The list of industrial poisons that workers were exposed to is quite extensive. While the report is quite eye-opening, one of the Commission members, Dr. Alice Hamilton, was a historic figure of great interest.
Dr. Alice Hamilton (1869-1970), physician, social reformer and a pioneer in the field of industrial toxicology in the United States was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on February 27, 1869. Her sister was the well-known classics scholar and author Edith Hamilton. In 1893 she received her medical degree from the University of Michigan. Following internships in Minneapolis and Boston she did post-doctoral work at the Universities of Munich and Leipzig in Germany, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. She was appointed professor of pathology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1897.
In 1902 she accepted a position as bacteriologist at the Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases in Chicago. During the typhoid fever epidemic in Chicago that same year when she made a connection between improper disposal of sewage and the role of flies in transmitting the disease her findings led to a reorganization of the Chicago Health Department. Dr. Hamilton became director of the Occupational Disease Commission when Governor Charles Deneen created it in 1910. She noted the health problems of many of the immigrant poor workers were due to the unsafe conditions to which they were exposed while working. With no laws regulating safety at work, employers routinely fired ill workers and replaced them with new ones. The Occupational Disease Commission was the first commission of its type in the world and led to several workers’ compensation laws being passed in Illinois. This important report contains the findings of the Commission.
Dr. Hamilton lived and worked for nearly a decade Chicago’s Hull House (a settlement house in the middle of Chicago’s working class slums, where social activists lived and worked for progressive causes). Her friendship there with reformer Jane Addams sparked her interest in what was then called “occupational disease”. Focusing her scientific research skills on industrial diseases, she became a special investigator for the United States Bureau of Labor in 1911. By 1916 she had become a leading American authority on lead poisoning and one of the handful of worldwide specialists on industrial diseases. Her reports on lead, and later on rubber and munitions, led to improved safety standards nationwide.
She went on to become the first woman on the faculty of Harvard University in 1919 and later its first professor of public health. During the course of her long career, Hamilton published numerous studies on industrial toxicology, several books, and an autobiography.
Alice Hamilton died on September 22, 1970, in Hadlyme, Connecticut.
Image: Alice Hamilton during her first year at harvard, 1919.
Image Source:The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
For more information about Dr. Alice Hamilton:
Websites:
Video from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Alice Hamilton and the Development of Occupational Medicine
Alice Hamilton Collection: An inventory of the collection at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Alice Hamilton, M.D.
Alice Hamilton (1869-1970), Physician, Public Health reformer
Changing the face of Medicine: Biography: Dr. Alice Hamilton
Chemical Achievers: The Human Face of the Chemical Sciences: Alice Hamilton
Pashaei, Fatima. “Remembering Alice Hamilton.” Job Safety and Health Quarterly (JSHQ) volume 13, no. 3, Spring 2002
Women in Chemistry: Alice Hamilton
Bibliography:
Hamilton A. Exploring the dangerous trades: the autobiography of Alice Hamilton, MD. Boston: Little, Brown, 1943.
Sicherman, Barbara. Alice Hamilton. Alice Hamilton: A Life in Letters. Harvard University Press, 1984. Second publishing- University of Illinois Press, 2003.
Governor’s Special Message Transmitting the Report of the Commission on Occupational Diseases, April 1909
Report of Commission on Occupational Diseases to His Excellency Governor Charles Deneen, 1911
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