Alice Hamilton (February 27, 1869[3] – September 22, 1970)
was an American physician, research scientist, and author who was best known as
a leading expert in the field of occupational health and a pioneer in the field
of industrial toxicology.
Subsequent to her graduation from the University of Michigan
Medical School, she became the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard
University. Her scientific research focused on the study of occupational
illnesses and the dangerous effects of industrial metals and chemical
compounds. In addition to her scientific work, Hamilton was a social-welfare
reformer, humanitarian, peace activist, and a resident-volunteer at Hull House
in Chicago. She was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, most notably
the Albert Lasker Public Service Award for her public-service contributions.
Early life and family
Alice Hamilton, the second child of Montgomery Hamilton
(1843–1909) and Gertrude (née Pond) Hamilton (1840–1917), was born on February
27, 1869, in Manhattan, New York City, New York. She spent a sheltered childhood among an
extended family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where her grandfather, Allen Hamilton,
an Irish immigrant, had settled in 1823. He married Emerine Holman, the
daughter of Indiana Supreme Court Justice Jesse Lynch Holman, in 1828 and
became a successful Fort Wayne businessman and a land speculator. Much of the
city of Fort Wayne was built on land that he once owned. Alice grew up on the
Hamilton family's large estate that encompassed a three-block area of downtown
Fort Wayne. The Hamilton family also spent many summers at Mackinac Island,
Michigan. For the most part, the second and third generations of the extended Hamilton's family, which included Alice's family, as well as her uncles, aunts,
and cousins, lived on inherited wealth.
Montgomery Hamilton, Alice's father, attended Princeton
University and Harvard Law School. He also studied in Germany, where he met
Gertrude Pond, the daughter of a wealthy sugar importer. They were married in
1866. Alice's father became a partner in
a wholesale grocery business in Fort Wayne, but the partnership dissolved in
1885 and he withdrew from public life. Although the business failure caused a
financial loss for the family, Alice's outspoken mother, Gertrude, remained
socially active in the Fort Wayne community.
Alice was the second oldest of five siblings that included
three sisters (Edith, Margaret, and Norah) and a brother (Arthur
"Quint"), all of whom were accomplished in their respective fields.
The girls remained especially close throughout their childhood and into their
professional careers. Edith (1867–1963),
an educator and headmistress at Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, became a
classicist and renowned author for her essays and best-selling books on ancient
Greek and Roman civilizations. Margaret (1871–1969), like her older sister
Edith became an educator and headmistress at Bryn Mawr School. Norah
(1873–1945) was an artist, living and working at Hull House. Arthur
(1886–1967), the youngest Hamilton sibling, became a writer, professor of
Spanish, and assistant dean for foreign students at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign. Arthur was the only sibling to marry; he and his wife,
Mary (Neal) Hamilton, had no children.
Education
Hamilton's parents homeschooled their children from an
early age. Following a family tradition
among the Hamilton women, Alice completed her early education at Miss Porter's
Finishing School for Young Ladies (also known as Miss Porter's School) in
Farmington, Connecticut, from 1886 to 1888. In addition to Alice, three of her
aunts, three cousins, and all three of her sisters were alumnae of the school.
Although Hamilton had led a privileged life in Fort Wayne,
she aspired to provide some type of useful service to the world and chose
medicine as a way to financially support herself. Hamilton, who was an avid reader, also cited
literary influence for inspiring her to become a physician, even though she had
not yet received any training in the sciences: "I meant to be a medical
missionary to Teheran, having been fascinated by the description of Persia in
[Edmond] O'Donovan's The Merv Oasis. I doubted if I could ever be good enough
to be a real missionary, but if I could care for the sick, that would do
instead."
After her return to Indiana from school in Connecticut,
Hamilton studied science with a high school teacher in Fort Wayne and anatomy
at Fort Wayne College of Medicine for a year before enrolling at the University
of Michigan Medical School in 1892. There she had the opportunity of studying with
"a remarkable group of men” – John Jacob Abel (pharmacology), William
Henry Howell (physiology), Frederick George Novy (bacteriology), Victor C.
Vaughan (biochemistry) and George Dock (medicine). During her last year of
study, she served on Dr. Dock's staff, going on rounds, taking histories and
doing clinical laboratory work. Hamilton
earned a medical degree from the university in 1893.
In 1893–94, after graduation from medical school, Hamilton
completed internships at the Northwestern Hospital for Women and Children in
Minneapolis and at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury,
a suburban neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, to gain some clinical
experience. Hamilton had already decided
that she was not interested in establishing a medical practice and returned to
the University of Michigan in February 1895 to study bacteriology as a resident
graduate and lab assistant of Frederick George Novy. She also began to develop
an interest in public health.
In the fall of 1895, Alice and her older sister, Edith,
traveled to Germany. Alice planned to study bacteriology and pathology at the
advice of her professors at Michigan, while Edith intended to study the classics
and attend lectures. The Hamilton sisters faced some opposition to their
efforts to study abroad. Although Alice was welcomed in Frankfurt, her requests
to study in Berlin were rejected and she experienced some prejudice against
women when the two sisters studied at universities in Munich and Leipzig.
When Alice returned to the United States in September 1896,
she continued postgraduate studies for a year at the Johns Hopkins University
Medical School. There she worked with Simon Flexner on pathological anatomy.
She also had the opportunity to learn from William H. Welch and William Osler.
Career
Early years at
Chicago's Hull House
In 1897 Hamilton accepted an offer to become a professor of
pathology at the Woman's Medical School of Northwestern University. Soon after
her move to Chicago, Illinois, Hamilton fulfilled a longtime ambition to become
a member and resident of Hull House, the settlement house founded by social
reformer Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. While Hamilton taught and did research at the
medical school during the day, she maintained an active life at Hull House, her
full-time residence from 1897 to 1919. Hamilton became Jane Addams' personal
physician and volunteered her time at Hull House to teach English and art. She
also directed the men's fencing and athletic clubs, operated a well-baby
clinic, and visited the sick in their homes. Other inhabitants of Hull House included
Alice's sister Norah, and her friends Rachelle and Victor Yarros. Although
Hamilton moved away from Chicago in 1919 when she accepted a position as an
assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, she returned to Hull House and
stayed for several months each spring until Jane Addams's death in 1935.
Through her association and work at Hull House and living
side by side with the poor residents of the community, Hamilton witnessed the
effects that the dangerous trades had on workers' health through exposure to
carbon monoxide and lead poisoning. As a result, she became increasingly
interested in the problems the workers faced, especially occupational injuries
and illnesses. The experience also
caused Hamilton to begin considering how to merge her interests in medical
science and social reform to improve the health of American workers.
When the Woman's Medical School closed in 1902, Hamilton
took a position as bacteriologist with the Memorial Institute for Infectious
Diseases, working with Ludvig Hektoen. During
this time, she also formed a friendship with bacteriologist Ruth Tunnicliffe. Hamilton
investigated a typhoid epidemic in Chicago before focusing her research on the
investigation of industrial diseases. Some
of Hamilton's early research in this area included attempts to identify causes
of typhoid and tuberculosis in the community surrounding Hull House. Her work on typhoid in 1902 led to the
replacement of the chief sanitary inspector of the area by the Chicago Board of
Health.
The study of industrial medicine (work-related illnesses)
had become increasingly important because the Industrial Revolution of the late
nineteenth century had led to new dangers in the workplace. In 1907 Hamilton
began exploring existing literature from abroad and noticed that industrial
medicine was not being studied as much in America. She set out to change the
situation and published her first article on the topic in 1908.
Medical Investigator
Hamilton began her long career in public health and
workplace safety in 1910, when Illinois governor Charles S. Deneen appointed
her as a medical investigator to the newly-formed Illinois Commission on Occupational
Diseases. Hamilton led the commission's
investigations, which focused on industrial poisons such as lead and other
toxins. She also authored the
"Illinois Survey," the commission's report that documented its
findings of industrial processes that exposed workers to lead poisoning and
other illnesses. The commission's efforts resulted in the passage of the first
workers' compensation laws in Illinois in 1911, in Indiana in 1915, and
occupational disease laws in other states. The new laws required employers to
take safety precautions to protect workers.
By 1916 Hamilton had become America's leading authority on
lead poisoning. For the next decade, she
investigated a range of issues for a variety of state and federal health
committees. Hamilton focused her explorations on occupational toxic disorders,
examining the effects of substances such as aniline dyes, carbon monoxide,
mercury, tetraethyl lead, radium, benzene, carbon disulfide, and hydrogen
sulfide gases. In 1925, at a Public Health Service conference on the use of
lead in gasoline, she testified against the use of lead and warned of the
danger it posed to people and the environment.
Nevertheless, leaded gasoline was allowed. The EPA in 1988 estimated that over the
previous 60 years that 68 million children suffered high toxic exposure to lead
from leaded fuels.
Her work on the manufacture of white lead and lead oxide, as
a special investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is considered a
"landmark study". Relying
primarily on "shoe-leather epidemiology" (her process of making
personal visits to factories, conducting interviews with workers and compiling
details of diagnosed poisoning cases) and the emerging laboratory science of
toxicology, Hamilton pioneered occupational epidemiology and industrial
hygiene. She also created the specialized field of industrial medicine in the United States. Her findings were scientifically persuasive and influenced
sweeping health reforms that changed laws and general practice to improve the health of workers.
During World War I, the US Army tasked her with solving a
mysterious ailment striking workers at a munitions plant in New Jersey. She led
a team that included George Minot, a Professor at Harvard Medical School. She
deduced that the workers were being sickened through contact with the explosive
trinitrotoluene (TNT). She recommended that workers wear protective clothing to
be removed and washed at the end of each shift, solving the problem.
Hamilton's best-known research included her studies on
carbon monoxide poisoning among American steelworkers, mercury poisoning of
hatters, and "a debilitating hand condition developed by workers using
jackhammers." At the request of the
U.S. Department of Labor, she also investigated industries involved in
developing high explosives, "spastic anemia known as 'dead fingers'"
among Bedford, Indiana, limestone cutters, and the "unusually high
incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis" among tombstone carvers working in
the granite mills of Quincy, Massachusetts, and Barre, Vermont. Hamilton was also a member of the Committee
for the Scientific Investigation of the Mortality from Tuberculosis in Dusty
Trades, whose efforts "laid the groundwork for further studies and
eventual widespread reform in the industry."
Women's rights and
peace activist
During her years at Hull House, Hamilton was active in women's
rights and peace movements. She traveled with Jane Addams and Emily Greene
Balch to the 1915 International Congress of Women in The Hague,[42] where they
met Aletta Jacobs, a Dutch pacifist, feminist, and suffragist.[43][44]
Rediscovered historical footage shows Addams, Hamilton, and Jacobs before the
Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on May 24, 1915, during a visit to German to meet
government leaders.[45] She also visited German-occupied Belgium.[29]
Hamilton returned to Europe with Addams in May 1919 to
attend the second International Congress of Women at Zurich, Switzerland. In
addition, Hamilton, Addams, Jacobs, and American Quaker Carolena M. Wood became
involved in a humanitarian mission to Germany to distribute food aid and
investigate reports of famine.
Assistant professor,
Harvard Medical School
In January 1919 Hamilton accepted a position as assistant
professor in a newly-formed Department of Industrial Medicine (and after 1925
the School of Public Health) at Harvard Medical School, making her the first
woman appointed to the Harvard University faculty in any field. Her appointment was hailed by the New York
Tribune with the headline: "A Woman on Harvard Faculty—The Last Citadel
Has Fallen—The Sex Has Come Into Its Own". Her own comment was "Yes, I am the first
woman on the Harvard faculty—but not the first one who should have been appointed!"
During her years at Harvard, from 1919 to her retirement in
1935, Hamilton never received a faculty promotion and held only a series of
three-year appointments. At her request, the half-time appointments for which
she taught one semester per year allowed her to continue her research and spend
several months of each year at Hull House. Hamilton also faced discrimination
as a woman. She was excluded from social activities, could not enter the
Harvard Union, attend the Faculty Club or receive a quota of football tickets.
In addition, Hamilton was not allowed to march in the university's commencement
ceremonies as the male faculty members did.
Hamilton became a successful fundraiser for Harvard as she
continued to write and conduct research on the dangerous trades. In addition to
publishing "landmark reports for the U.S. Department of Labor" on
research related to workers in Arizona copper mines and stonecutters at Indiana's
limestone quarries, Hamilton also wrote
Industrial Poisons in the United States (1925), the first American textbook on
the subject, and another related textbook, Industrial Toxicology (1934). At
tetraethyl lead conference in Washington, D.C. in 1925, Hamilton was a prominent critic of adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline.
Hamilton also remained an activist in social reform efforts.
Her specific interests in civil
liberties, peace, birth control, and protective labor legislation for women
caused some of her critics to consider her a "radical" and a
"subversive." From 1924 to
1930, she served as the only woman member of the League of Nations Health
Committee. She also visited the Soviet Union in 1924 and
Nazi Germany in April 1933. Hamilton wrote "The Youth Who Are Hitler's
Strength," which was published in The New York Times. The article
described the Nazi exploitation of youth in the years between the two world wars. She
also criticized the Nazi education, especially its domestic training for girls.
Later years
After her retirement from Harvard in 1935, Hamilton became a
medical consultant to the U.S. Division of Labor Standards.[58] Her last field
survey, which was made in 1937–38, investigated the viscose rayon industry. In
addition, Hamilton served as president of the National Consumers League from
1944 to 1949.
Hamilton spent her retirement years in Hadlyme, Connecticut,
at the home she had purchased in 1916 with her sister, Margaret. Hamilton
remained an active writer in retirement. Her autobiography, Exploring the
Dangerous Trades was published in 1943.[59] Hamilton and coauthor Harriet
Louise Hardy also revised Industrial Toxicology (1949), the textbook that
Hamilton had initially written in 1934. Hamilton also enjoyed leisure
activities such as reading, sketching, and writing, as well as spending time
among her family and friends.
Death and legacy
Hamilton died of a stroke at her home in Hadlyme,
Connecticut, on September 22, 1970, at the age of 101. She is buried at Cove Cemetery in Hadlyme.
Hamilton was a tireless researcher and crusader against the
use of toxic substances in the workplace. Within three months of her death in 1970, the
U.S. Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act to improve
workplace safety in the United States.
Recognition and
awards
Hamilton was awarded honorary degrees from the University of
Michigan, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College.
She was included in the American Men in Science: A Biographical
Dictionary (1906).
In 1935 Eleanor Roosevelt presented Hamilton with the Chi
Omega women's fraternity's National Achievement Award.
In 1947 Hamilton became the first woman to receive the
Albert Lasker Public Service Award for her public service contributions.
In 1956 she was named TIME magazine's "Woman of the
Year" in medicine.
In 1973 Hamilton was
posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
On February 27, 1987, the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health dedicated its research facility as the Alice
Hamilton Laboratory for Occupational Safety and Health. The Institute also
began giving an annual Alice Hamilton Award to recognize excellent scientific research
in the field.
In 1995 the U.S. Postal Service honored Hamilton's
contributions to public health with a 55-cent commemorative postage stamp in
its Great Americans series.
In 2000 the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, erected statues of
Alice, her sister, Edith, and their cousin, Agnes, in the city's Headwaters
Park.
On September 21, 2002, the American Chemical Society
designated Hamilton and her work in industrial toxicology a National Historic
Chemical Landmark in recognition of her pioneering role in the development of
occupational medicine.
Hamilton has been
heralded as a pioneering female environmentalist. The Division of Occupational and Environmental
Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, sponsors an annual
lecture named in recognition of her achievements in these areas. Since 1997 the American Society for
Environmental History has annually awarded the Alice Hamilton Prize for the
best article published outside the Environmental History journal.
On September 26, 2018, one bust of Alice Hamilton was placed
in the foyer of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Building of the Harvard T.H. Chan
School of Public Health, and another bust, also by local sculptor Robert Shure,
was placed in the Atrium in the Tosteson Medical Education Center of the
Harvard Medical School.
Annually, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's
Committee on the Advancement of Women Faculty (CAWF) sponsors the annual Alice
Hamilton lecture and award to recognize especially promising junior faculty
women.
Selected published
works
Books:
·
Industrial Poisons in the United States (1925)
·
Industrial Toxicology (1934’ rev. 1949)
·
Exploring the Dangerous Trades: The
Autobiography of Alice Hamilton, M.D. (1943).
Articles:
·
"Hitler Speaks: His Book Reveals the
Man," Atlantic Monthly (April 1933)
·
"The Youth Who Are Hitler's Strength,"
New York Times, 1933
·
"A
Woman of Ninety Looks at Her World," Atlantic Monthly (1961)
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