May brought us flowers and a lot to celebrate on social media!
Throughout the month of May we observed Mental Health Awareness Month. This included sharing information and graphics from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. On May 11, we observed National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day. Kids often imitate adult behavior. Passing down healthy habits, including ones related to mental health, is imperative!
The popularity of Star Wars continues to this day. Just after the movie’s premiere in the late 1970’s, President Carter and the National Immunization Program asked the film’s two droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, to star in a campaign promoting immunization. A television commercial and a poster were made for this, with the latter in our collection.
School nurses are some of the first healthcare workers that children meet. On May 10th we celebrated them. National School Nurses Day invites us to thank these caregivers. This photograph from Health Work in the Schools by Ernest Bryant Hoag and Lewis M. Terman shows a school nurse in action.
Who better than to help us celebrate Mother’s Day and Women’s Health Week than the Roman goddess of women’s health, Juno. She made her appearance in 1950 at the Cleveland Health Museum, helping to explain how the female body worked.
Do you like foraging for your food? Then you probably celebrated National Mushroom Hunting Day on May 17th. The Field Book of Common Gilled Mushrooms by William S. Thomas helps you identify which you can eat and which you cannot!
World Goth Day happened on May 22nd. The macabre is at the forefront of this often-misunderstood subculture. We showed off some of the many skeletons in our collection, including this from The Last Will and Testament of Basil Valentine by Basil Valentine.
One of New York City’s prominent bridges, The Brooklyn Bridge, celebrated its 140th birthday on May 24th. It appears on a card from our William H. Helfand Pharmaceutical Trade Card collection promoting Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.
International Plastic Free Day on May 25th seeks to have at least one day without single-use plastics. The day usually falls around Memorial Day, a long weekend often spent enjoying picnics, the beach, or hiking, all occasions tempting us to be wasteful. To keep on enjoying, we need to squash the usage of these products.
Throughout the month, artists used the hashtag and prompt #MerMay as a creative inspiration signaling mermaids and mermen. Towards the end of the month, we shared another image from the Helfand Trade Card collection, this one featuring the aquatic folk using Ayer’s Hair Vigor to attract sailors.
Finally, we are counting down the days until Museum Mile Festival 2023! On Tuesday, June 13th, cultural institutions along Museum Mile on 5th Avenue will be celebrating with extended hours, giveaways, and a look inside the collections. The NYAM Library will be set up at 103rd and 5th—come visit us!
The New York Academy of Medicine Library posts updates like this throughout the week. We can be found online over at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Check back here or on our social media for more chances for a look inside our collection!
Since 1949, May has been recognized in the United States as Mental Health Awareness Month. The National Association for Mental Health, now Mental Health America, set up the month of educational events to clear up misconceptions about mental health and provide resources to those who need them.
The knowledge of public health is always changing. What may have been taken as fact years ago is not necessarily the truth now. This is true for understanding mental health, or formerly, mental hygiene.
The goal of this conference was what the public could do regarding their own mental health. They came up with six tenets.
While worded harshly in today’s terms, these suggestions try to offer a compassionate understanding of mental illness. The fourth, “Speak and think of insanity as a disease and not as a crime,” stands out as something we continue to struggle with today.
One of the forefathers of the mental health awareness movement would not be considered a traditional mental health expert. Clifford Whittingham Beers was born in 1896. Mental illness ran in his family. He himself served several stints in mental institutions. Upon the cruel treatment inflicted upon him at these hospitals, he went on to write a memoir on the subject. In A Mind That Found Itself, he writes of the degradation that he and his fellow patients were subject to. This memoir was key to providing a voice for those who were afraid to speak of their own illness. In 1909 Beers founded the organization now called Mental Health America.
From the first edition of A Mind That Found Itself.
Since the publication of Beers’ book, several writers have explored their own experience. These mental health memoirs offer both guidance and companionship to those who also suffer. They provide maps for those who care about those who may be suffering and allows a peek inside minds that many cannot comprehend.
Some of these authors bring humor to their reflections. Two funny people wrote about their own struggles. Kevin Breel is a Canadian comedian. He also suffers from depression. His memoir, Boy Meets Depression, allows readers into the mind of someone who experienced the mental illness early on in life. Sara Benincasa is known for being a comical blogger. Her own memoir Agorafabulous! reveals her fight with depression as well as agoraphobia, the fear of leaving one’s house.
Graphic memoirs allow us to see with the author’s vision. In dealing with mental health, we get to experience dark visions or the physical manifestation of anguish.
The Hospital Suite by John Porcellino starts off with a hospitalization. After his illness, Porcellino‘’s health didn’t get better. His brief stint had taken a toll on his mental health. He writes about the experience of his recovery from an obsessive-compulsive episode. Porcellino is candid about his struggles and his fears of his bouts recurring.
Ellen Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder before her thirteenth birthday. Afraid of stunting her creativity, she seeks treatment that will help her fulfill her potential. She begins to look at other artists who have suffered from mental illness. Finding all minds are different, she wonders what’s going to be best for her. Forney takes us on her personal highs and lows in Marbles.
Towards the end of his work on the epidemic of mental fatigue and pressure, People Under Pressure, Albert M. Barrett, MD, offered a sympathetic take on mental health challenges. For fifteen years prior to his 1960 publication, he worked alongside counselors and therapists. Barrett urges us to consider a different point of view. He writes, “For no man is an island, and the relief we provide other human beings will reflect itself in our own peace of mind.” Compassion is vital towards greater public health.
References:
Barrett, Albert M. People under Pressure. College and University Press, 1960.
Benincasa, Sara. Agorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom. William Morrow Paperbacks, 2013.
Breel, Kevin. Boy Meets Depression: Or Life Sucks and Then You Die Live. Harmony Books, 2015.
Clifford, Beers W. A Mind That Found Itself; an Autobiography. Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908.
Forney, Ellen. Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me: A Graphic Memoir. Gotham Books, 2012.
National Committee for Mental Hygiene, and State Charities Aid Association (N.Y.). Committee on Mental Hygiene. Proceedings of the Mental Hygiene Conference and Exhibit at the College of the City of New York…. Committee on Mental Hygiene of the State Charities Aid Association, 1912.
Porcellino, John. The Hospital Suite. Drawn & Quarterly, 2014.
By Dr. Evelyn Rynkiewicz, Assistant Professor of Ecology,. Department of Science and Mathematics at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York.
My name is Dr. Evelyn Rynkiewicz, I am a professor of ecology at the Fashion Institute of Technology. I teach a course there called “Disease Ecology in a Changing World,” and my background and research is in disease ecology of coinfecting parasites in mice. I wanted to present a course like this for FIT students because diseases are something that affect all of us, everyone has experience being sick, and because emerging infectious diseases are a growing global issue (even before the Covid-19 pandemic, which is of course still impacting us). The challenge in teaching science courses at FIT is that our students mainly have majors in the design and business fields, not in the sciences, so I try to make the course material relate to their backgrounds and experiences as much as possible, to make the content more relevant to them. I also want to increase science literacy in my students, making them comfortable reading, understanding, and talking about science in their personal and professional lives.
I learned about the New York Academy of Medicine Library after seeing the “Germ City” exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. I got in contact with the Historical Collections Librarian, Arlene Shaner, who set up a visit to show me some of the materials she thought would relate to my course. I was blown away! I knew my students would love to see these historical documents. These materials highlight not only the art and history of how scientists and the public interacted with diseases through time, but also show how intertwined social, economic, and political issues are with how society’s experiences of disease.
Our class took a field trip to the NYAM Library and was shown an array of material; from Hooke’s book on microscopy, Edward Jenner’s work describing his development of the first vaccine, to posters and leaflets used from WWII to the present day to inform people about diseases such as malaria, HIV, or tuberculosis. I am always excited to see what students find interesting from this visit. Many enjoyed seeing the graphic design and illustrations used in the posters, such as those by Dr. Seuss and Keith Haring. Others picked up on how women and marginalized groups were often those who did a lot of the work caring for sick and infected people. Some just liked seeing the historical materials related to New York and being able to see how their home was impacted by diseases in the past.
One of the main assessments for the course is a creative research project where students choose a disease to study and then make a presentation with something creative related to that disease that would help someone learn more about it. I encourage the students to think about how they could use their skills learned from their major and apply it to this topic. The field trip to the NYAM Library provides the initial inspiration for this. I am always so proud and surprised at what they come up with!
Here are some of the things they created:
Arriana Tran, a Fashion Business Management major, created a movie poster. Inspired by the warnings her parents shared with her on the risk of becoming infected with Dengue in her parent’s home country of the Philippines.
Packaging Design major Ethan Wolfsberg designed a malaria testing and monitoring kit that would be able to be used in remote areas that are heavily impacted by this disease. A real-life version would be made in languages appropriate for the area.
To reduce the stigma of taking PreP, Francis Lavery, also a Fashion Business Management major, made an image that emphasizes that this treatment is appropriate for everyone.
Illustration major Leia Garrette wanted to visually show how infection with the agent of Lyme Disease impacts all parts of the body. She created a paper doll where each layer illustrated a different system (e.g. muscles, nervous system) accompanied by an explanation of how each is affected by the infection.
This flyer was created by Sarah Sepulveda from Fashion Business Management. Her plan was for a support group for parents worried about or impacted by Zika virus. There was a focus on Brazil where the outbreak was especially significant in 2016.
Once again, a huge thanks to Arlene and the others at NYAM for their help and insight. I look forward to more collaboration!
My name is Anthony Murisco. I am the Public Engagement Librarian here at NYAM. A few weeks back, we celebrated Pi Day by baking a couple of pies. I wanted to share my own experience.
For those who may not know or need a refresher, Pi is a mathematical constant. The symbol π, the Greek letter for P, represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The ratio will always be π. When written out, π is approximately 3.14. π is an irrational number, whose decimal form continues forever, which is why a shorter form is used. Hence March 14, 3/14, is known as Pi Day.
Pi Day is a celebration of all things mathematical as well as that certain baked good. Pi and pie not only share a name but are both circular. While the holiday may have earlier origins, the first recorded celebration was heralded by physicist Larry Shaw in 1988. When discussing the “mysteries of pi” with a colleague, he realized the irrational number has some rationality to it! In an effort to make learning math fun, he conducted the first Pi Day celebration with his class. The event, now celebrated by math enthusiasts all over, includes reciting the value of π to as many decimal places as one can, a real memorization challenge, and of course, pie tasting.
From The encyclopædia of practical cookery (1898) by Theodore Francis Garrett
What better way to celebrate than by baking a pie? This year, this was my task. The New York Academy of Medicine Library has a plethora of recipe books, some more than 200 years old. A selection of these books has been shared before, on social media, in this very blog, and even on our digital exhibition. Here was one of the first attempts of our staff making a dish!
After searching through several books and finding only savory recipes, our Historical Collections Reference Librarian, Arlene Shaner, discovered what I was looking for. In the 1824 edition of The Virginia house-wife lay a recipe for simply “Apple Pie.”
Mary Randolph first published The Virginia Housewife in 1824. Its popularity led to several editions and reprints. The Virginia housewife, or Methodical Cook was the first of its kind, a published manual of recipes and housekeeping tips that would later surge and create an industry. This was the perfect book to make a pie from.
Title page of the 1824 edition of The Virginia house-wife by Randolph.
The book featured three different recipes. Only one specified that it was a pie. Arlene predicted that the second recipe was for pie filling. She is an experienced baker. She went with that one. I had never baked a pie before. I didn’t want to do anything wrong. I stuck with Randolph’s “Apple Pie.”
I looked at the recipe to make a list of ingredients. Apples. Cloves. It called for “powdered sugar.” And rose water. I stopped by my local pop-up market and got four large red delicious apples. Each looked almost double the size of a single apple. Surely this would be enough! Powdered sugar and whole cloves were easy to get. It wasn’t on my list but, I opted for a pre-made crust. While I know that pre-made is not ideal, I had never made a crust before. I would have needed even further directions! If store-bought is fine for Ina Garten, it would be good enough for me. The rose water ended up being the most elusive ingredient in my neighborhood. After several failed shopping trips, I contemplated looking up replacements. I ended up finding rose water downtown at a hip chain grocery store.
Having never baked like this before, I tried to stick exactly to the recipe. The years of doing mail-in meal services will do that to you! Without the exact measurements, I was left a little confused—how would I know how much to use?
Two of the pie recipes. Notice how the second is not specifically stated as a pie!
The Virginia House-wife and other older cookbooks are not specific with their instructions. There’s a notion that you have some culinary instinct if you are reading it. The recipes are a supplement to your knowledge. Randolph did not foresee someone like me, a beginner, taking on the challenge.
During the filling of the crust, I noticed, two apples in, that I should have gotten more apples. I’ve seen pies filled before with an arrangement of the fruit, a kind of beautiful Busby Berkeley dance. This was not my case. Still, I used what I had! While the apples didn’t fill the pie completely, it wasn’t as empty as I had feared.
Ready to be baked!
When I discussed my experience with Arlene, she told me that the powdered sugar I used was the wrong ingredient. Powdered sugar today is not the same as it was then. In the past, you would get a loaf of sugar, scrape off what you needed, and “powder” the cake that way. It was more akin to granulated sugar today. Modern-day powdered sugar, or confectioners’ sugar, quickly dissolves and tends to absorb the moisture. Though the pie tasted good, I had given it a different spin. I think that may have been Randolph’s goal. She doesn’t want to tell you exactly how to bake or cook, she just gives you some general directions.
The finished product.
While it may not have looked the best, that didn’t matter. The pie I made was tasty. The powdered sugar dried up some of the apples. I also put too many cloves. This led to quite a spicy taste.
Since 2020, Dr. Rachel Snell, a historian, has been working her way throughThe Virginia house-wife. Using two editions, 1824 and 1838, she created “The Virginia Housewife Project” to explore the recipes while investigating ideas of domesticity and the history of each recipe. I wish I had seen her blog prior to making the pie, so I could have prepared a little more!
I hope to be able to share more of these recipes in the future. In the meantime, please check out our digital collection of cookbooks. Maybe something will inspire a course for your dinner tonight!
Before the written word, we relied on our stories being passed down orally. These tales were meant to explain and justify the mysteries of the world around us. Fables, folksongs, and myths are examples of these. Our common superstitions act as bite-sized versions of this folklore.
While every month has its sayings , March is known specifically for two. “Beware the ides of March,” comes from a line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Rome’s dictator hears these words from a mysterious oracle on the day that he was assassinated. Through the years the saying has trickled down into our collective lexicon. It warns of caution towards the middle of March; the Ides fall on the 15th.
The other common saying is “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.” It’s included in various compendiums of popular superstitions without any specific origin. It makes sense, though, that after the destruction of crops by killing frost, the fresh fertility of the land brings to mind an innocent animal. Lambs have long had religious symbolism for innocence and these animals were also a sign of luck. The first lamb of Spring meant good fortune, specifically if it faced you. If it was caught looking away, that was thought less lucky . After this yearly demise of crops, “luck” was needed. Previously March had been known as “boisterous” month in the Middle Ages, as well as the “windy” month in the revolutionary calendar of the first French republic.
Academic, teacher, and author Dr. Frank Clyde Brown started to accumulate folklore related to his state of North Carolina. On the advice of the American Folklore Society, he created the North Carolina Folklore Society in the early 1910s. He collected state-specific stories, songs, and tales from about 1910 to 1940. When he died in 1943, the collection became known as the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore.
Brown’s collection was published almost twenty years after his death as Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina. Upon its publication, the work is believed to have been the “first general work along comparative lines” of specifically American proverbs. Included in this collection is a longer saying, “If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb. If March comes in like a lamb, it will go out like a lion.” For the most part, we don’t hear the second sentence anymore. Our predecessors believed in explanations for all of life’s occurrences and often arrived at the answer of balance: if a month began with a storm, surely it would end brightly and sunny! Perhaps for snappier flow, lines needed excision.
That’s not to say that these sayings are not around anymore! Nor does it negate their kernels of truth, some based on observed early science. We still circulate many of these whether it be in the water cooler at work or shared on social media. It is important to place these within context. We now know that they are not to be taken as facts but rather as what was once believed to be facts.
As the dreaded ides of March draw near, we offer up a few more of these sayings from the Brown Collection to celebrate the month:
-A thunderstorm in March indicates an early spring. -A windy March and a rainy April make a beautiful May (Also, March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers). -The first thunderstorm in March wakes up the alligators. -Fog in March; Frost in May. -The better the hunter you are, and the more you know about wild things, the surer you are that all rabbits turn to “he-ones” in March. -If you plant seeds on St. Patrick’s Day, they will grow better. -A dry March never begs bread. -Frost never kills fruit in March, no matter how full the tree blooms.
And for those hoping for a fruitful March, I leave you with -To make cabbage seed grow, sow them in your night clothes on March seventeenth.
September 15 marks the beginning of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which celebrates the cultures, traditions, heritage, and achievements of those in the United States who trace their roots to Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. At the New York Academy of Medicine, we are celebrating the accomplishments and contributions of Hispanic Americans to medicine and public health in the United States. According to survey data compiled by the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis in 2018, more than 10% of registered nurses in the United States identified as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish. Contrast this with Ildaura Murillo-Rohde’s remarks about the paucity of representation in Washington, DC, for Hispanic nurses early in her career: “I saw that I was the only Hispanic nurse who was going to Washington to work with the federal government, review research and education grants, etc. There was nobody else. I looked behind me and thought: ‘Where are my people?’”
Ildaura Murillo-Rohde, PhD, RN, FAAN (1920–2010). National Association of Hispanic Nurses.
Ildaura Murillo-Rohde (1920–2010) was a Panamanian American nurse, academic, and health policy advocate who championed of the unique health care needs of Hispanic populations. Murillo-Rohde earned a nursing diploma from the Medical and Surgical Hospital School of Nursing in San Antonio, Texas, before obtaining an undergraduate degree in the teaching and supervision of psychiatric nursing from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1953. Upon graduation, she joined Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, working with patients diagnosed with “Puerto Rican syndrome,” the name for a condition first used to describe traumatized Puerto Rican soldiers in the Korean War. Wayne County General Hospital’s Psychiatric Division in Michigan then recruited her before she returned to New York to open Elmhurst General Hospital’s first psychiatric division in Queens. In 1971 she became the first Hispanic nurse to earn a PhD from New York University.
Throughout her career Murillo-Rohde maintained a strong commitment to growing the ranks of Hispanic nurses. Informed by her experience as a reviewer of federal research and education grants, she also sought to boost the number of policy experts advising lawmakers on the health care concerns of Hispanic communities. In the 1970s, Murillo-Rohde was an active member of the American Nurses Association (ANA), where she mounted a two-year-long effort to include the Ad Hoc Committee of the Spanish-Speaking/Spanish Surname Nurses’ Caucus in the ANA’s administrative structure. In 1975, with a group of about 15 nurses, Murillo-Rohde formed the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN) after the ANA rejected attempts to formally recognize the caucus.
Murillo-Rohde in the 1970s. Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, MC 172.
Since its inception, NAHN has worked broadly to improve health care delivery and outcomes for the Hispanic community in the United States. Today, the organization sponsors an award for distinction in nursing scholarship, research, and practice, as well as a scholarship for Hispanic students enrolled in nursing programs that lead to licensure.
NAHN also publishes Hispanic Health Care International, featuring research and scholarship on issues of import to US and international Hispanic populations. Judith Aponte, a 2012 NYAM Fellow and Associate Professor of Nursing at Hunter College, is a former editor-in-chief of HHCI.
Beyond her role as founder and first president of NAHN, Murillo-Rohde was an expert on psychotherapy, marriage, and family therapy, and served in several roles in academic administration, including Dean of the College of Nursing at SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Murillo-Rohde’s influence was felt internationally as well through her appointment as WHO’s psychiatric consultant to the Guatemalan government, establishing a pilot program to train personnel in psychiatric care. She further served as Permanent UN Representative to UNICEF for the International Federation of Business and Professional Women. Murillo-Rohde passed away in her native Panama in 2010 at the age of 89.
2. Brush, Barbara & Villarruel, Antonia (2014). “Heeding the Past, Leading the Future.” Hispanic Health Care International. 12. DOI: 10.1891/1540-4153.12.4.159.
3. Feldman Harriet, PhD, RN, FAAN, et al. Nursing Leadership: A Concise Encyclopedia. 2nd ed., Springer Publishing Company, 2011, p. 393.
4. Ildaura Murillo-Rohde Papers, Barbara Bates Center for The Study of The History of Nursing, School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania.
6. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, National Center for Health Workforce Analysis. 2019. Brief Summary Results from the 2018 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, Rockville, Maryland. https://data.hrsa.gov/DataDownload/NSSRN/GeneralPUF18/nssrn-summary-report.pdf
At its Annual Meeting of the Fellows, November 12, 2020, The New York Academy of Medicine is presenting the Stephen Smith Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Public Healthto the Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of the State New York. The following appreciation of Smith is based on an exhibit that Historical Collections Librarian Arlene Shaner created in 2005 when the award was established.
Dr. Stephen Smith (1823–1922), Academy Fellow for 68 years, had a career as a Bellevue Hospital surgeon and a professor of surgery and anatomy at Bellevue Hospital Medical College and New York University. He wrote a field manual for Civil War army surgeons, was Health Commissioner of New York from 1868 to 1875, and was a founder of the American Public Health Association and its first president. Through his work the condition of the city, the state, and the nation markedly improved by the application of public health regulations for the common good.
Stephen Smith was born on a farm in Skaneateles, New York, on February 19, 1823, the son of a cavalry officer in the Revolutionary War and his wife. [1] He first studied medicine at Geneva Medical College, where a fellow student was Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman medical school graduate in the United States. He left Geneva for Buffalo Medical College and then relocated to New York City, where he finally received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1850. Smith completed his residency at Bellevue Hospital and became an attending surgeon there in 1854; the following year he was elected a NYAM Fellow. He served on the faculty of Bellevue Hospital Medical College from its founding in 1861 until 1874, when he joined the faculty in the medical department of New York University.
In addition to his work as a practicing physician and surgeon, Smith shared the editorial responsibilities for the New York Journal of Medicine with NYAM luminary Dr. Samuel Smith Purple and assumed the editorship completely when Purple retired in 1857. The journal changed its name to the American Medical Times three years later, and Smith continued as its editor until 1864. [2]
Mid-nineteenth-century New York City was subject to recurring outbreaks of deadly diseases. As Smith later proclaimed, “The unsanitary condition of the city prior to 1866 cannot be described so that an audience of today can fully appreciate the reality. Nuisances dangerous to life and detrimental to health existed everywhere.” [3] Smith used his investigative skill and editorial position to campaign for wide-ranging reforms, including sanitary inspections, street cleaning, garbage collection, and the regulation of tenement housing and slaughterhouses.
Stephen Smith. The City That Was (New York: Frank Allaben, 1911, frontispiece.
“[Smith] had no law on his side to begin with and he made his fight by publicity. He traced twenty individual typhus cases to one house in East Twentieth Street, which he found full of immigrant families suffering from typhus. Through the tax records he reached the owner, a wealthy and prominent man who flatly refused to do anything about it. Dr. Smith looked up the law and found that there was no way to proceed against the owner. He then went to William Cullen Bryant, then the editor of The New York Evening Post. ‘At the suggestion of Mr. Bryant,’ said Dr. Smith, ‘I finally succeeded in bringing the owner of the fever nest into court on the change of maintaining a nuisance. Bryant’s reporter, who had been instructed, so frightened the owner that he promised to close and repair the house if only the matter were kept out of the papers. Bryant agreed and the owner kept his promise.’” [3]
Smith’s work led to the noted Citizens’ Association 1865 investigation and report on sanitary conditions in the city [4] and the passage of the 1866 Metropolitan Health Law. He was appointed one of New York City’s first health commissioners, serving until 1875.
Once the Metropolitan Board of Health had been established, Smith argued for the establishment of a State Board of Health. To bolster his case, he used evidence from the success of other state boards of health and of the city’s board. He made his case in a series of publications, notably The Care of Health and Life in the State of New York and A State Board of Health. A Communication to a Member of the Legislature …, both published in 1880. [5]In the latter work he noted, “Already the agitation necessary and incident to the effort to secure the passage of this Bill has produced the most gratifying results in awakening thoughtful minds all over the State to the value of preventive medicine. Not only medical men, but laymen in every pursuit of business, have expressed their surprise at their previous apathy, and their determination now to press these questions upon the attention of the Legislature until adequate legislation is obtained.” The New York State Legislature created the State Board of Health that same year; in 1901 the board was reorganized as the State Department of Health.
In between, Smith’s ambitions reached the national scene. In 1872, he was one of the founders of the country’s premier professional public health organization, the American Public Health Association. He served as its first president up to 1875. [6]
From the book presented to Smith at a dinner in his honor, February 18, 1911. MS [Stephen Smith], a token of profound esteem and high regard from his many friends. [New York], Tiffany Co., 1911.
In later life, Smith was widely honored for his work in American public health. [7] He took time to reflect on the changes that his efforts achieved. His best-known book, The City That Was (1911), tells the story of the deplorable public health conditions that existed in New York City at the beginning of the 19th century and the measures he recommended to remedy those conditions, including regular sanitary inspections. [8]
Smith’s intertwined initials, from the book presented to him at a dinner in his honor, February 18, 1911. MS [Stephen Smith], a token of profound esteem and high regard from his many friends. [New York], Tiffany Co., 1911.
Smith believed man’s natural lifespan to be one hundred years, based on his contention that most animals live for five times the number of years required for the complete formation of their bones. He died on August 27,1922, some six months short of his 100th birthday. [3]
_____
Notes
[1] Jay H. Glasser, PhD, Elizabeth Fee, PhD, and Theodore M. Brown, PhD. “Stephen Smith (1823–1922): Founder of the American Public Health Association,” American Journal of Public Health, 2011 November; 101 (11): 2058. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2009.188920, accessed November 2, 2020.
[2] During the Civil War, he wrote Hand-book of Surgical Operations, with many printings in New York in 1862 and 1863. Its preface announced:
“This Hand-Book of Surgical Operations has been prepared at the suggestion of several professional friends, who early entered the medical staff of the Volunteer Army.”
After the war, Smith produced another surgical work: Manual of the principles and practice of operative surgery, which went through numerous editions between 1879 and 1887.
[3] “Dr. Stephen Smith Dies in 100th Year.” The New York Times, August 27, 1922, p. 28.
[4] Citizens’ Association of New York, Council of Hygiene and Public Health, Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York Upon the Sanitary Conditions of the City (New York, NY: Appleton, 1865).
[5] Stephen Smith, The Care of Health and Life in the State of New York (New York, 1880)and idem, A State Board of Health. A Communication to a Member of the Legislature on Sanitary Organization and Administration in the State of New York (New York, 1880).
On February 18, 1911, a dinner in honor of Smith’s 88th birthday took place at the Hotel Plaza. The Library holds both the program for the dinner and the speeches:
Dinner in honor of Doctor Stephen Smith and in celebration of his eighty-eighth birthday on Saturday evening, the eighteenth of February, one thousand, nine hundred and eleven at the Hotel Plaza (New York: Tiffany & Co., 1911).
Addresses in recognition of his public services, on the occasion of his eighty-eighth birthday, Feb. 19, 1911 (s.l., 1911).
Ten years later, the American Public Health Association published A Half Century of Public Health Jubilee Historical Volume of the American Public Health Association in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of its Foundation, New York City, November 14–18, 1921 (New York, 1921). The work began with Smith’s historical overview of public health. The commemorative medal has Smith’s portrait on the front, with this legend on the reverse:
To Commemorate the Semicentennial Meeting of the American Public Health Association 1872 – New York – 1922 Noteworthy because of the Participation of its Founder Dr. Stephen Smith Born Feb. 19, 1823.
[8] Stephen Smith. The City That Was (New York: Frank Allaben, 1911).
Every 10 years, the Federal census counts the country’s population. The count is mandated in the Constitution in order to distribute political power, as the census leads to deciding how many representatives a state will send to the House as well as to redrawing their district boundaries. Government resources flow according to population. And public health research uses census data, providing tools to better understand the conditions of people and their health.
Percentage of the Nation in New York City and Six Other Areal Groupings of Continental United States, 1790–1930, in Population of the City of New York 1890–1930 (New York: Cities Census Committee, Inc., 1932), 10. NYAM Collection.
Using census data for social purposes relies on a particular way of measuring things, though. To be useful, some “granularity” is needed: it’s not just at the state or county level that we need statistics, it’s rather at the block and neighborhood level. And there needs to be some sense of “commensurability”: a measure of a neighborhood in one part of a city, say, needs to be readily comparable to the measure in another part. And stability of the measuring unit is important; the geographical unit needs to stay the same over the years. For populations that are ever-changing, in place and age and origin, this is no mean feat. The fact that it works in the American context at all is largely due to one man, Walter Laidlaw, a statistician of the early 20th century who revolutionized the way that the Census Bureau carried out the New York census, a change that eventually was implemented for the whole country.
Walter Laidlaw (1861–1936), was a Canadian Presbyterian minister. As a child, he was adopted by his uncle, Robert Laidlaw, founder of a prominent lumber company in Esquesing Township, southwest of Toronto. After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1881, Princeton Theological Seminary in 1884, and going on for further study at the University of Berlin and again at Princeton Seminary, he was called to be pastor of the Jermain Memorial Church in Watervliet (now West Troy), New York, a post he held from 1886 to 1892.[1]
After a year as president of the new University of Fairhaven (which later became Western Washington University, Bellingham) from 1892 to 1893, he settled in New York City, at St. Nicholas Collegiate Reformed Church, part of the Dutch Reformed tradition, from 1894–1895. But a new opportunity called: in 1895, he was appointed the first executive director of the newly formed New York Federation of Churches and Christian Workers. He held this position for almost 30 years, until 1922. Along the way, Laidlaw earned a Ph.D. from New York University in 1896; the field has not been determined, but statistics was his passion.
From his position as executive director of the Federation of Churches, and as editor of its journal, Federation, Laidlaw sought to put the work of religion on a secure scientific basis. Who were the people of New York? What social and economic needs did these people have? Where were the (Protestant, at least) houses of worship and settlement houses? Data were needed, and the census seemed a good place to start.
New York and Neighborhood. In In New York City 1920 Census Committee, Statistical Sources for Demographic Studies of Greater New York, 1920 (New York: New York City 1920 Census Committee, Inc., 1922), xliv. NYAM Collection.
At this time, there were two: the Federal census, conducted in the years ending in “0,” the New York State census in the years ending in “5,” and they didn’t work the same way. As he details in a classic 1906 article in Federation, the counting principles differed between the Federal and state censuses, from one year’s census to the next, and even for different parts of the city within the same census. The Federal census of 1900 rolled up its data differently: for Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, city council wards were used, and for Manhattan and the Bronx, New York State Assembly districts. And then the 1905 state census used New York State Assembly districts in all five boroughs. In Laidlaw’s words: “The ward is a fixed boundary, immobile as the orthography of a dead language,” he said; drawing out the metaphor, he continued, “the Assembly district is a changing boundary, a phonetic spelling arrangement which responds to the alien accents in the makeup of the city.” To get good data, the Federation found itself retabulating first the 1900 Federal census for 2 boroughs, and then, for the 1905 state census, for all 5 boroughs. At this point, Laidlaw called for a new system: “The scientific sociological study of Greater New York requires a ‘dead language’ boundary for tabulations. . . . Federation respectfully suggests a scheme which does away both with ward and Assembly district outlines, and which can be permanent.” [2]
The system he proposed was securely within the American tradition. It was, in fact, to use the system that was enshrined in law in the Land Ordinance of 1785: the “section” system set up to survey and sell the undeveloped lands west of the Appalachians. (An arial view of a Midwestern county, in Indiana, say, would reveal the regularity of the system!) Laidlaw’s first unit of analysis was the quarter-section: a quarter of a square mile, or 160 acres.
The whole city could be mapped into 1,308 quarter section plots, . . . The “quarter sections” could not, to be sure, be invariably 160 acres. Blocks should not be broken. But well defined area of about 160 acres could easily be devised. . . . [The] designation . . . could become uniform in the Federal Census tabulations, perpetually, and in the work of every department of the city, not excepting even the tax office.[3]
The idea caught on. The U.S. Census Bureau adopted it the same year in preparation for the 1910 Federal census, but took the area down to 40-acre plots and called the basic units “census tracts.” By 1914, the city’s Department of Health had adopted census tracts as “‘sanitary areas’ to be followed in constructing new administrative districts in tuberculosis clinic work, baby health station districts, etc.” The sanitary areas were grouped together to form “Health Area Units.” [4]
Sanitary districts of Manhattan. In New York City 1920 Census Committee, Statistical Sources for Demographic Studies of Greater New York, 1920 (New York: New York City 1920 Census Committee, Inc., 1922), 12A. NYAM Collection.
Sanitary districts of Manhattan. Sanitary districts of Manhattan. In New York City 1920 Census Committee, Statistical Sources for Demographic Studies of Greater New York, 1920 (New York: New York City 1920 Census Committee, Inc., 1922), 12B. NYAM Collection.
Although eight cities ostensibly made use of census tracts in 1910 data gathering, New York remained the only one to analyze and publish the data to that granularity. The technique spread to 10 more cities for the 1930 census, and 42 more in 1940. The entire county was covered by census tracts by the year 2000. More importantly, the social service purposes that Laidlaw brought to his recommendations for the census came to fruition in governmental circles. Census tract data became a standard unit for analysis in public health, both for government and for academia.
As for Walter Laidlaw, he was deeply involved in every census from 1910 to 1930, often as a leader in the city census committees and as editor of the published compiled results. On May 20, returning from lunch at the Mayor’s Committee on City Planning, he died. His funeral, at Riverside Church, presided over by Harry Emerson Fosdick, attracted the notables of the City.[5]
[4] Godias J. Drolet and William H. Guilfoy, “Organization of Local Health Area Statistics in New York City,” American Journal of Public Health 20(4), April 1930: 380–386.
This the first entry in our series on female New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) Fellows and their contributions to society. Please also see our biographical sketch of Mary Putnam Jacobi, the first female Fellow.
A pioneer in public health and champion of preventative medicine, New York Academy of Medicine Fellow Dr. Sara Josephine Baker (1873–1945) had a significant impact on the landscape of maternal and infant health outcomes in the early twentieth century in New York City. Throughout her long career as a physician and health inspector, Baker introduced and supported numerous measures to reduce maternal, infant, and child mortality and morbidity, particularly in immigrant and low-income communities within the city. Her work saved countless lives and had substantial influence within the larger structure of medicine and public health in New York and beyond.[1] Baker and her career were exceptional in many ways, but in particular, she engendered greater public trust in the medical profession by encouraging greater reliance on doctors while still allowing for and expecting continued trust in other sources of knowledge.
Portrait of Sara Josephine Baker. In S. Josephine Baker, Fighting for life (1939). NYAM Collection.
Baker, who was often referred to affectionately as “Dr. Jo,” earned her medical degree from the Women’s Medical College at the New York Infirmary, which was founded by early female physicians Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell.[2] Following her graduation, she began practicing in New York while serving as a medical inspector for the New York Life Insurance Company and as a part-time medical examiner for the city. In 1907, she was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Health, and by the following year was named the first director of the Bureau of Child Hygiene.[3]
The doctors and nurses of the Bureau of Child Hygiene in 1909. In S. Josephine Baker, Fighting for life (1939). NYAM Collection.
Among Baker’s chief concerns as director were those regarding the high infant mortality and morbidity rates in the city, especially in communities with low rates of access to sanitary medical care. In her 1939 autobiography Fighting for Life, she noted the high rates of infant blindness, illness, and deaths in the city, and attributed them to overreliance on the unqualified advice of neighbors and friends as well as a lack of sanitation of spaces and materials.[4] In 1913 she wrote a pamphlet for new mothers, in coordination with the New York Milk Committee, titled “Talks with Mothers,” instructing them on how to best prevent these and other issues, as well as urging them to consult with medical professionals whenever possible.[5] Additionally, Baker lamented high rates of infant, child, and maternal mortality in New York. Many of her public health and preventative care efforts were directed toward lowering these mortality rates, particularly by improving access to pasteurized milk and sanitary medical care. Sanitation was not Baker’s sole focus, however; she marveled at how babies living in tenements seemed to be doing better than foundlings living in sanitary hospitals, and concluded that “personal care from a maternally minded mother” was as important for a baby’s survival as sanitation.[6] She then implemented a program where “tenement mothers” fostered foundlings from the hospital, which led to a drastic drop in the mortality rate among these babies — from 50% to 33% generally, and from 100% to 50% among “hopeless cases.”[7]
A firm believer in social medicine, Baker formed her opinions and efforts regarding public health around the needs and circumstances of the communities she served. Her commitments to serving immigrant and low-income communities can be clearly seen in her considerations of the practice of midwifery in the city and of the needs of working mothers. Despite feeling that midwives in the U.S. were largely “very clumsy [practitioners] indeed who had got into the profession as [amateurs] and stayed in to make a living,” Baker recognized that many women, especially those who had grown up in countries where midwives were more widely respected and utilized, were uncomfortable with the “American” practice of (male) physician-attended birth.[8] Positing that without midwives women might put themselves at further risk by seeking the help of unqualified neighbors and friends before seeking a doctor (if they could even afford to), Baker became focused on implementing a system to regulate the practice of midwifery in the city to ensure higher standards of care. This stance put her at odds with many of her peers, and in Fighting for Life, she described a “hot discussion” with her colleagues at the New York Academy of Medicine over the matter.[9] In order to ensure the well-being of infants whose mothers were in the workforce, a common occurrence particularly in low-income households at the time, Baker developed the Little Mothers League to educate older children on the proper care of infants. Since older daughters were often tasked with caring for their siblings while their parents worked, Baker believed it was important to ensure that everyone caring for babies was prepared to do so. The education girls received from the Little Mothers League, Baker reasoned, also had the positive side effect of larger-scale understanding of the proper care of children, as the “Little Mothers” shared their new expertise with their parents, friends, and communities.[10]
Sara Josephine Baker’s long, wide-ranging, and impressive career saw significant improvements in the well-being of mothers and children in New York City and beyond. Aside from her efforts to improve the care of infants, she championed preventative healthcare for toddlers and school-aged children and mothers, and was instrumental—twice—in catching the first known asymptomatic carrier of typhoid, “Typhoid Mary” Mallon.[11] By the time she retired in New Jersey with her partner Ida Wylie and their friend Louise Pearce in the mid-1930s, New York City had the lowest urban infant mortality rate in the United States.[12] Sara Josephine Baker’s social and preventative approach to medicine engendered greater and more widespread public trust in medical professionals while respecting the need for other sources of knowledge and care, and made New York City a healthier place.
References
[1] Manon Parry, “Sara Josephine Baker (1873-1945),” American Journal of Public Health 96 No. 4 (2006), pp. 620–621.
[4] Sara Josephine Baker, Fighting for Life (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1939), 116–119, New York Academy of Medicine Library, New York, NY, Special Collections, Call No. WZ 100 B168 1939, Film 8865 no. 5.
[5] Sara Josephine Baker, “Talks with Mothers” (New York, NY: The New York Milk Committee, for the Babies’ Welfare Association of New York City, 1913), New York Academy of Medicine Library, New York, NY, Pamphlet Collection, Box 97, Call No. 115239.
By Carrie Levinson, Reference Services & Outreach Librarian
Recently, the Academy hosted a talk between Paul Krugman and Tsung-Mei Cheng, entitled “Priced Out: The Economic and Ethical Costs of American Health Care.” This event focused on Uwe E. Reinhardt’s latest book, which discusses today’s U.S. healthcare system. Krugman and Cheng delivered lively and nuanced explanations of why our system is so expensive, especially compared with other similar countries, the morality involved in having costs so high, and some potential solutions.
A photograph of Michael M. Davis from Michael M. Davis: A tribute, by Alice Taylor Davis and Gertrude Auerbach (1972?). NYAM Collection.
The debate about healthcare in the United States is not a new one, however. One notable medical economist whose collection is one of the most interesting in the Academy’s library, Michael Marks Davis, advocated for comprehensive medical care and national health insurance, and worked in many prominent organizations and committees throughout his career, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the Committee for Research in Medical Economics, and the Committee for the Nation’s Health (New York Academy of Medicine, n.d.).
Davis donated his collection of papers and reports in 1962. This collection is important because, among other things, it provides source material for studying some of the most significant historical legislative advances in the United States, as well as social trends of the 1920s through the 1960s, aspects of medicine and health in other countries, and confidential and other unpublished reports that likely are not duplicated elsewhere. Below is a short description of the kinds of material that can be found within these papers, originally compiled by Lee Ash (1967).
Series 1: Medical Economics and Medical Sociology
Material on medical care costs and studies by, for, and about the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, including confidential reports; also material on state, industrial and cooperative medical plans, comprehensive group medical plans, and union health programs.
Series 2: Medical Care in the United States
Materials including confidential reports made for foundations in the United States; material on rural economic conditions from the 1930’s through the 1950s, and on rural health problems and programs, material on medical education, hospitals, and medical personnel.
Series 3: Legislation and Legal Aspects
Materials on legislation since 1950, and publications, reports, correspondence, and ephemera relevant to legislation prior to 1950, public assistance and child welfare, mental health, and state legislation, including sickness and disability insurance programs to be paid for by the state, and original texts of bills.
Series 4: Organizations
Samples of special reports, annual reports, and letters to and from Dr. Davis concerning the work of various organizations, grouped into the following sections: Professional Organizations, General Organizations, International Organizations, and Political Organizations.
Series 5: Medical Care in Foreign Countries
Public documentation and correspondence with leaders and private physicians concerned with social medicine and public health abroad; a good deal of material focusing on the National Health Service Act; published and unpublished reports from many other countries.
Series 6: Personalities
Correspondence, notes, comments, clippings, personality evaluations, and memorabilia to, from, and about all of the leaders Dr. Davis associated with in his work.
Article with graphs looking at illness and income in Volume 21 of the Michael M. Davis papers. NYAM Collection in Public Health in Modern America, 1890-1970 .
These short descriptions don’t even begin to cover the richness of the Davis collection. With over 400,000 pieces (Ash, 1967), it might seem insurmountable to researchers, but that’s not the case. We have an excellent finding aid that goes into more detail about the materials and how to find them, as well as giving detailed biographical information on Dr. Davis. Not enough for you? You may recall our blog post about our partnership with Gale to digitize material related to public health in America. Well, this entire collection can be found in Gale’s new database Public Health in Modern America, 1890-1970! If your institution doesn’t subscribe to it, you can make an appointment to view it at our library.
Conversation and arguments about healthcare costs and structure are unlikely to stop anytime soon, but with collections such as Davis’s available to those who are interested, we can understand the history of such discussions in going forward.
References
Ash, L. (1967). The Michael M. Davis Collection of Social and Economic Aspects of Medicine. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 43(7), 598–608. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1806900/
Books, Health and History 