Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B.
Speaker 1: Wilson and Tracy. Today's episode is going to delve into
Speaker 1: the start of the study of occupational disease and the
Speaker 1: woman behind that beginning. That's an important field, it is,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those interesting things that we see
Speaker 1: is so important today but a hundred years ago not
Speaker 1: so much. Well, occupational health has also been affecting people
Speaker 1: for much, much, much longer than it has existed as
Speaker 1: a field, like Yes, and it is one of those
Speaker 1: things that even while I was researching this episode, I
Speaker 1: found myself going, why why didn't anybody study this? There's
Speaker 1: there's pretty obvious cause and effect for some of this stuff. Welle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but a number of previous episode topics are going to
Speaker 1: get mentioned as we uh go through this story. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh so. Dr Alice Hamilton's was a trailblazer in science
Speaker 1: and medicine, and she dedicated her life to improving the
Speaker 1: workplace standards for laborers in an effort to reduce illnesses
Speaker 1: that came ardly from working with toxic chemicals, and this
Speaker 1: episode was requested by our listener Emily, who actually sent
Speaker 1: us a book to kickstart research, which is very kind
Speaker 1: and it's actually a really fun book. So thank you, Emily.
Speaker 1: So on February eighteen sixty nine, Alice Hamilton was born
Speaker 1: in New York City. Her parents were Montgomery Hamilton's and
Speaker 1: Gertrude Pond. The family had really strong roots in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Speaker 1: That was where her grandfather had been a land speculator
Speaker 1: and entrepreneur after immigrating from Ireland to the United States,
Speaker 1: and he had bought and sold a lot of property
Speaker 1: in Fort Wayne. Yeah, I read one account that basically said,
Speaker 1: like almost any piece of property you stand on in
Speaker 1: Fort Wayne today at some point passed through his hands
Speaker 1: in terms of ownership. Alice was born in New York
Speaker 1: because her mother, Gertrude, had wanted to go to have
Speaker 1: the baby at her only home, which was in New York.
Speaker 1: But when Alice was still very very tiny, she and
Speaker 1: her mother went back home to Fort Wayne to live
Speaker 1: on the property that they had there, which is a
Speaker 1: family called Old House, and the Old House itself had
Speaker 1: been built in eighteen forty and Alice once described it
Speaker 1: as having been built quote for beauty, space, dignity, not
Speaker 1: for comfort and convenience. The family had staff, and so
Speaker 1: that inconvenience was borne by them, but Alice was very
Speaker 1: aware of the inherent wastefulness in building rooms so large
Speaker 1: that there had to be someone constantly tending to the fires,
Speaker 1: and having so many stories before running water that maids
Speaker 1: had to continually be carting water up flights of stairs
Speaker 1: on Montgomery. Gertrude and the children didn't live in Old House,
Speaker 1: although they spent a lot of their time there. They
Speaker 1: had a slightly smaller home on the same property called
Speaker 1: White House, and a home called Red House was where
Speaker 1: Alice's uncle lived. The one thing that Alice saw is
Speaker 1: a great benefit in those overly large hall elmes was
Speaker 1: the ability to find some quiet space to be alone
Speaker 1: and get away from the bustle of a very large family.
Speaker 1: Alice and her sisters Edith, Margaret, and Norah, and her
Speaker 1: one baby brother, Arthur, who came along a little later,
Speaker 1: were home schooled by their parents. Gertrude Pond Hamilton's thought
Speaker 1: that the hours of public schools were unreasonable, and her father,
Speaker 1: Montgomery thought that the subjects that they taught at those
Speaker 1: schools were far too boring for his children. Uh. Edith
Speaker 1: incidentally went on to become a well known author and classicists.
Speaker 1: You mean recognize the name of Hamilton's and the sisters
Speaker 1: had all been born pretty closely, within six years of
Speaker 1: each other, and they were very very close to one another.
Speaker 1: Their brother, Arthur, who went by quint was born much
Speaker 1: later when Alice was seventeen. Alice described this upbringing, being
Speaker 1: taught at home and not really having friends outside of
Speaker 1: their family, as one that turned them all into book
Speaker 1: worms eventually. Quote and since we saw so little of
Speaker 1: any children outside our own family, the people we met
Speaker 1: in books became real to us. But to be clear,
Speaker 1: there were other children around. Eleven cousins lived on the
Speaker 1: property where old house and the other home set, so
Speaker 1: sort of a giant family compound kind of yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until Alice was a teenager of seventeen
Speaker 1: that she received any formal education, when she attended Miss
Speaker 1: Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. And that was and still
Speaker 1: is a private preparatory school in Connecticut, and Alice's time
Speaker 1: there was the prelude to entering the University of Michigan
Speaker 1: Medical School. Alice thought that the school was awful, and
Speaker 1: she selected courses that would either be fairly easy. She
Speaker 1: already had a lot of linguistics education from her parents,
Speaker 1: so she took a lot of that, or she picked
Speaker 1: courses for which she could just memorize the needed information
Speaker 1: without really digesting and understanding it. But that meant that
Speaker 1: when she decided to go into medicine she was woefully lacking.
Speaker 1: She needed to take extra classes to get properly prepared
Speaker 1: for it. She had take physics, chemistry, biology, and anatomy
Speaker 1: courses after she finished at Miss Porter's. Once those were complete,
Speaker 1: she enrolled at the University of Michigan. Even though this
Speaker 1: was decades after Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to
Speaker 1: graduate for medical school in the United States, it was
Speaker 1: still pretty unusual for a woman to pursue a career
Speaker 1: as a physician. But it turned out that Alice really
Speaker 1: loved both the freedom and the challenge of being on
Speaker 1: her own and learning so much about clinical and lab work. Eventually,
Speaker 1: she decided she wanted to do research instead of practice medicine,
Speaker 1: and when she finished medical school in eight she worked
Speaker 1: as an intern in Minneapolis Minnesota at the Hospital for
Speaker 1: Women and Children, and after two months there, she moved
Speaker 1: to her next training position, this time at the New
Speaker 1: England Hospital for Women and Children, which is located near Boston.
Speaker 1: Her education continued after that. She studied in Leipzig and
Speaker 1: Munich over the course of a year. Because Germany was
Speaker 1: really where her chosen fields of bacteriology and pathology were
Speaker 1: most advanced. This was a tricky thing for her to
Speaker 1: negotiate because German schools were not open to women at
Speaker 1: that time. Alice and her sister Edith, who traveled to
Speaker 1: Germany with her, had to promise that they would be
Speaker 1: invisible to the male students. After gaining a solid level
Speaker 1: of knowledge in Europe, Alice came back to the United
Speaker 1: States to attend Johns Hopkins University for a year. Once
Speaker 1: all of that schooling was done, Hamilton's made the switch
Speaker 1: in roles from student to educator and she began teaching
Speaker 1: at the Northwestern University's Women's Medical School. In addition to
Speaker 1: her teaching, she also joined Chicago's Hull House and moved
Speaker 1: in there. That is the settlement house founded by Jane
Speaker 1: Adams that we discussed in our episode about Adams Alice
Speaker 1: Hamilton has actually mentioned very briefly in that episode, and
Speaker 1: as part of her life at Hull House, Alice founded
Speaker 1: a well baby clinic for the community, and she also
Speaker 1: made the connection between typhoid spread and poor sewage disposal
Speaker 1: during the nineteen two epidemic in Chicago. Hull House made
Speaker 1: a big impact on Alice, and her ongoing work there
Speaker 1: really shaped her worldview. She once famously said of it quote,
Speaker 1: life in a settlement does several things to you. Among others,
Speaker 1: it teaches you that education and culture have little to
Speaker 1: do with real wisdom, the wisdom that comes from experiences.
Speaker 1: And it was during this work at Hull House and
Speaker 1: offering medical treatment and assistance to the poor families in
Speaker 1: the community, that Alice started to see firsthand just how
Speaker 1: closely linked disease was to poverty, and she started to
Speaker 1: realize just how dangerous working conditions were for the poor,
Speaker 1: who were often immigrants with little power to improve their
Speaker 1: workplaces or to move into less hazardous careers. In she
Speaker 1: wrote her first paper on the subject of occupational disease,
Speaker 1: and her works importance and her level of knowledge on
Speaker 1: the topic were pretty quickly acknowledged. This is the time
Speaker 1: when workers in the United States were routinely handling toxic
Speaker 1: substances with little to no protection. We have talked on
Speaker 1: the podcast before about things like fossy jaw and mercury poisoning,
Speaker 1: and those were not uncommon among poor laborers, but in
Speaker 1: the United States there really wasn't any formal work being
Speaker 1: done to study these kinds of issues in the workplace.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about the next stage in
Speaker 1: Hamilton's career, which came because of the recognition that she
Speaker 1: achieved for that early work in studying occupational disease. But
Speaker 1: first we'll pause and have a little of sponsor break.
Speaker 1: In Alice Hamilton's was appointed to lead an Occupational Disease
Speaker 1: Commission which was formed by Illinois Governor Charles Deneen, and
Speaker 1: that commission was established to study industrial disease. It was
Speaker 1: the first of its kind in the United States. Lead, arsenic,
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide, brass, cyanides, and turpentine were all to be
Speaker 1: studied over the course of a year per the Governor's office,
Speaker 1: and Hamilton's, in addition to being the leader of this initiative,
Speaker 1: focused on lead in particular, and so she started researching
Speaker 1: the connection between industry and disease, pioneering the field of
Speaker 1: occupational epidemiology. She later wrote quote, it was while I
Speaker 1: was living in Hull House and working in bacteriological research
Speaker 1: that the opportunity came to me to investigate the dangerous
Speaker 1: trades of Illinois, not those where violent accidents occurred, but
Speaker 1: those with the less spectacular hazard of sickness from some
Speaker 1: industrial poison. It was a voyage of exploration that we
Speaker 1: undertook our little group of physicians and student assistants, for
Speaker 1: nobody in Illinois knew even then where we should make
Speaker 1: our investigation beyond a few notorious led trades. American medical
Speaker 1: authorities had never taken industrial diseases seriously. The American Medical
Speaker 1: associations had never held a meeting on the subject, and
Speaker 1: while European journals were full of articles on industrial poisoning,
Speaker 1: the number published in American medical journals up to nineteen
Speaker 1: ten could be counted on one's fingers. And the work
Speaker 1: on this project was extensive. Dr Hamilton's and her team
Speaker 1: spoke with laborers and pharmacists about factory conditions and instances
Speaker 1: of lead poisoning. They also reviewed medical records and hospitals,
Speaker 1: and they went to factories to see for themselves what
Speaker 1: the conditions were like. And, as you might suspect, this
Speaker 1: line of investigation was not exactly welcomed by some of
Speaker 1: the people in power in the industries that she wanted
Speaker 1: to research. In her autobiography, she describes some of the
Speaker 1: attitudes about illness and injury that she encountered. Quote, as
Speaker 1: I look back, some striking pictures come to me of
Speaker 1: that anarchic period. One is the picture of the works
Speaker 1: manager of a big white lead plant, a gentleman of
Speaker 1: breeding and something of a philanthropist. He is looking at
Speaker 1: me indignantly and exclaiming why that sounds as if you
Speaker 1: think that when a man gets lead poisoning in my plant,
Speaker 1: I ought to be held responsible. Another is that of
Speaker 1: a Hungarian men at Hull House telling me of a
Speaker 1: terrible accident and a steel mill on the South shore
Speaker 1: in which her husband had been injured. He and the
Speaker 1: other victims were being held in communicato and the company hospital.
Speaker 1: No one was allowed to see them. She knew nothing
Speaker 1: except that her husband was not dead. Yeah, she has
Speaker 1: a lot of accounts. If you read her autobiography, there
Speaker 1: are many similar stories that she witnessed A lot of
Speaker 1: Hamilton's writing on the issues she was researching at this
Speaker 1: time mentioned the various people who were ignorant and indifferent
Speaker 1: in allowing dangerous circumstances to continue to be the norm
Speaker 1: in factories, from the owners to the foreman, to the
Speaker 1: company doctors, and even the workers. She wrote quote, the
Speaker 1: employers could, if they wished, shut their eyes to the
Speaker 1: dangers their workmen faced, for nobody held them responsible, while
Speaker 1: the workers accepted the risks with fatalistic submissiveness as part
Speaker 1: of the price one must pay for being poor. She
Speaker 1: also cataloged the various excuses she was given by employers
Speaker 1: and her investigation about illness and disease among their workers.
Speaker 1: Some took racist positions, claiming that the various immigrant groups
Speaker 1: were filthy and never washed. Others claimed that various illnesses
Speaker 1: weren't the result of anything related to their work, but
Speaker 1: were caused by alcoholism among the employees. She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: there is no form of industrial poisoning which I have
Speaker 1: not heard some man attribute to whiskey. Even though Hamilton's
Speaker 1: and her colleagues had been appointed to a commission by
Speaker 1: the governor, they didn't have any actual authority to just
Speaker 1: walk into plants and start asking questions. And there was
Speaker 1: also no real set of guidelines or procedure for how
Speaker 1: they should do this work, so they simply started looking
Speaker 1: for themselves for places that would fall under the umbrella
Speaker 1: of their mandate, and then they would just ask to
Speaker 1: enter and look around and speak with someone in authority.
Speaker 1: And Alice does mention in her writing that she was
Speaker 1: always greeted with kindness and that in some cases foreman
Speaker 1: or factory owners already had their own worries about employee
Speaker 1: health and they were actually really glad to have someone
Speaker 1: helping them figure out the problem. This commission wasn't intended
Speaker 1: to be a whistleblowing operation, though Alice wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: identify any of the factories and her reports by name
Speaker 1: or give details that could identify them, and she submitted
Speaker 1: the reports in the manner that was requested. She wasn't
Speaker 1: completely comfortable with that, though. She worried that people weren't
Speaker 1: being helped in a direct way while government agencies reviewed
Speaker 1: the findings of the report, so she started a habit
Speaker 1: of telling the men in charge of the factories where
Speaker 1: she found concerns exactly what she felt was wrong. She
Speaker 1: gave these men her own recommendations for the simple steps
Speaker 1: they might take to improve conditions, and later she wrote
Speaker 1: about how surprised she was that this informal quote primitive
Speaker 1: method actually worked. In one case, she had visited a
Speaker 1: white lead works that was opened with the intent of
Speaker 1: being safe, but then there hadn't been a protocol in
Speaker 1: place to remove waste materials from production, and there were
Speaker 1: piles of it around the factory, and she spoke to
Speaker 1: the manager, but he was not very enthused about being
Speaker 1: told what to do. The plant owner wasn't really an option.
Speaker 1: He was elderly and not really actively involved in running
Speaker 1: the factory. But then she remembered that she actually knew
Speaker 1: the owner's daughter. The two women had gone to school together,
Speaker 1: and so by reaching out through that channel, Alice was
Speaker 1: able to explain to her former schoolmate problems going on
Speaker 1: in the lead works and encourage a little bit of change,
Speaker 1: and that worked. The factory not only changed its operating
Speaker 1: procedures to include removal of the waste products on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, leadership actually asked Alice to stop by periodically
Speaker 1: and inspect things for them and just touch base, and
Speaker 1: she continued to develop relationships both through these kinds of
Speaker 1: ways and with managers and foremen as often as possible
Speaker 1: so that she could keep their discussions about safety cordial,
Speaker 1: and she continued to leverage any other means she could
Speaker 1: to enact change in ways that her government work couldn't
Speaker 1: really do. Ultimately, though the report that Alice compiled with
Speaker 1: her colleagues did have significant impact, it made a clear
Speaker 1: case showing that illnesses were often the result of on
Speaker 1: the job conditions. In nineteen eleven, the State of Illinois
Speaker 1: pass legislation that required three things of employers. One they
Speaker 1: had to follow new safety guidelines to minimize the risk
Speaker 1: of occupational disease. Two, if they employed workers in so
Speaker 1: called dangerous trades, they had to provide monthly health screening
Speaker 1: for those employees. And three, they had to report any
Speaker 1: illnesses to the Department of Factory Inspection. In nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: after her work with the State of Illinois Commission concluded,
Speaker 1: Alice Hamilton was asked to serve as a special investigator
Speaker 1: for the Federal Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics
Speaker 1: because of the reputation she had earned for her work
Speaker 1: at the state level, and she served in that role
Speaker 1: for almost a decade and continued her study and investigation
Speaker 1: of lead in industry, as well as rubber, viscast rayon,
Speaker 1: and other substances. Hamilton's continued to break barriers in her career,
Speaker 1: and we will get to another of those right after
Speaker 1: we pause for one of the sponsors that keeps us going.
Speaker 1: During World War One, Hamilton's turned her attentions to the
Speaker 1: industries associated with war for investigation. She studied factories where
Speaker 1: munitions were made, and she submitted reports outlining the dangers
Speaker 1: of the various chemicals involved and how those dangers might
Speaker 1: be addressed for work or safety. Many safety procedures were
Speaker 1: established because of the work she did during those years.
Speaker 1: She also commented at one point that she felt like
Speaker 1: because the government was so quick to act on those recommendations,
Speaker 1: it kind of gave her work a level of credibility
Speaker 1: that it hadn't really had before. Nearing the end of
Speaker 1: her work in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hamilton's was
Speaker 1: offered a position teaching at Harvard Medical School as an
Speaker 1: assistant professor of Industrial Medicine. That made her the first
Speaker 1: woman on the faculty there. And there's some irony in
Speaker 1: that appointment, the school wasn't accepting women as students at
Speaker 1: the time. When she was interviewed on the subject, Alice
Speaker 1: Hamilton was always quick to point out that she shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been the first woman on the faculty. She was
Speaker 1: I was like, yes, I am uh. We should have
Speaker 1: been doing this before. Uh. And despite the attention that
Speaker 1: her groundbreaking position gained the school, she was denied a
Speaker 1: number of benefits that were available to other faculty members.
Speaker 1: For example, she wasn't allowed into the faculty club, and
Speaker 1: she wasn't allowed to participate in the commencement procession, and
Speaker 1: she would not receive any football tickets. Those were all
Speaker 1: benefits that any other faculty member would have had. But
Speaker 1: as part of her hiring negotiation, Dr Hamilton's wanted to
Speaker 1: teach only one semester each year, and that way the
Speaker 1: remainder of the year would be spent on her work
Speaker 1: at Hull House and on her ongoing research into toxicology
Speaker 1: in Alice was appointed to the League of Nation's Health Committee,
Speaker 1: that made her the only woman chosen for it. That
Speaker 1: same year, she was invited to the Soviet Union top
Speaker 1: her expertise on the management and treatment of occupational disease.
Speaker 1: There Hamilton's continued to use her various positions to work
Speaker 1: not just for the betterment of occupational health, but also
Speaker 1: for social reform and healthcare. Her work with impoverished communities
Speaker 1: continued to drive her efforts, including work in epidemic disease,
Speaker 1: infant mortality reduction, and addiction, and she also advocated for
Speaker 1: family planning at a time when that was not a
Speaker 1: very welcome topic because she saw how much women in
Speaker 1: impoverished communities really didn't have education on the matter, and
Speaker 1: also in some cases their health was put at risk
Speaker 1: by having pregnancy after pregnancy, after pregnancy. She also worked
Speaker 1: in the interest of women's labor rights, even when that
Speaker 1: position stood in opposition to legislation that was introduced for
Speaker 1: equal rights. Hamilton was concerned that the wording of bills
Speaker 1: introduced for equality in the workplace would diminish protections for
Speaker 1: women in the workplace, so she became an advocate for
Speaker 1: women in labor industries like textile mills, food packaging and
Speaker 1: processing plants, as well as hospitality. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: she became an advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment once
Speaker 1: she felt that equality legislation wouldn't diminish protections for women
Speaker 1: at work, and part of the reason she was so
Speaker 1: adamant about those protections was that she had collected data
Speaker 1: that showed that there were ways in which women were
Speaker 1: more vulnerable than men when it came to certain issues
Speaker 1: of industrial poisoning. Her research indicated that women were more susceptible,
Speaker 1: particularly to lead poisoning, and all industrial poisonings had the
Speaker 1: added complication of potentially causing birth defects and or sterility.
Speaker 1: In she wrote the first text on toxicology, titled Industrial
Speaker 1: Poisons in the United States. Nine years later, in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, she wrote another text book, Industrial Toxicology. The
Speaker 1: year after Industrial Toxicology was first published, Hamilton's time at
Speaker 1: Harvard ended because she reached mandatory retirement age. In the
Speaker 1: sixteen years that she was there, she was never promoted
Speaker 1: beyond the title of assistant professor, and instead had been
Speaker 1: employed on a series of three year contracts that renewed
Speaker 1: over and over. After leaving Harvard, Hamilton's who was sixty
Speaker 1: six at the time, hadn't actually retired from her life's work.
Speaker 1: She moved to Haadline, Connecticut with her sister, Margaret, who
Speaker 1: like all four of the Hamilton's sisters, had not married,
Speaker 1: and Alice continued to consult on the topic of toxicology
Speaker 1: in industrial settings, including acting as an advisor to New
Speaker 1: York State Industrial Commissioner Francis Perkins. Even outside of consulting,
Speaker 1: Dr Hamilton's stayed busy. In y three, she wrote her autobiography,
Speaker 1: exploring the Dangerous Trades. She revised her textbook Industrial Toxicology
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty nine when she was eighty, and as
Speaker 1: Joseph McCarthy stirred up the Second Red Scare in the
Speaker 1: U S and the late forties and early fifties, she
Speaker 1: spoke out against it. At that point she was in
Speaker 1: her eighties. That activism continued into her nineties, when she
Speaker 1: wrote to President Kennedy to urge him to get American
Speaker 1: troops out of Vietnam. On February nineteen sixty nine, Hamilton's
Speaker 1: celebrated her one dred birthday the following year. She died
Speaker 1: on September twenty, nineteen seventy, after having a stroke. Three
Speaker 1: months after her death, on December seventy, the Occupational Safety
Speaker 1: and Health Act of nineteen seventy became law. It's opening
Speaker 1: paragraph reads an Act to assure safe and healthful working
Speaker 1: conditions for working men and women, by authorizing enforcement of
Speaker 1: the standards, development of the Act, by assisting and encouraging
Speaker 1: the States and their efforts to assure safe and healthful
Speaker 1: working conditions, by providing for research, information, education, and training
Speaker 1: in the field of occupational safety and health, and for
Speaker 1: other purposes. Yes, so that was kind of the culmination
Speaker 1: of her life's work, and she just missed seeing it
Speaker 1: happened by a few months. Today, the Centers for Disease
Speaker 1: Control and Prevention give out the Alice B. Hamilton Awards
Speaker 1: for Occupational Safety and Health, and on her birthday in
Speaker 1: ninety seven, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Speaker 1: Ridge Avenue Facility in Cincinnati, Ohio was dedicated to her
Speaker 1: memory and named the Alice Hamilton's Laboratory for Occupational Safety
Speaker 1: and Health. In two thousand two, the American Chemical Society
Speaker 1: designated Alice Hamilton's and her work in industrial medicine a
Speaker 1: National Historic Chemical Landmark. And to close, I wanted to
Speaker 1: offer up a fairly famous quote from Dr Allis Hamilton's autobiography,
Speaker 1: and it reads, quote, I chose medicine not because I
Speaker 1: was scientifically minded, for I was deeply ignorant of science.
Speaker 1: I chose it because as a doctor, I could go
Speaker 1: anywhere I pleased, too far off lands or to city slums,
Speaker 1: and be quite sure I could be of use anywhere.
Speaker 1: That's such a great sentiment, it is. And it's like
Speaker 1: her heaps me too. Uh. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting about her story is that
Speaker 1: it's sort of it shows how when there's progress in
Speaker 1: some field, it's not like there's a switch that gets
Speaker 1: flipped where everything is fixed now, like the Radium girls
Speaker 1: were after this, and like I think she was part
Speaker 1: of some of the investigation of that, and like that
Speaker 1: was well after Illinois had passed laws related to this.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's an example of sort of the trajectory
Speaker 1: of things that that take a while. And of course
Speaker 1: there are plenty of occupational issues that still exists today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In her autobiography, which we mentioned was written in the forties,
Speaker 1: there's a funny moment where she talks about how, like
Speaker 1: to her, it's almost amusing that people started using like
Speaker 1: the the safety first wording, when she's like, when I
Speaker 1: started doing this, that would have been like an athema
Speaker 1: nobody would have said those words. So she was seeing
Speaker 1: the progress and could appreciate her impact even if she
Speaker 1: did not get to see that the Osha law finally
Speaker 1: signed into reality. That law is older than I thought
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, yeah, it's one of those things I
Speaker 1: think people don't always know, like the origin point for OSHA,
Speaker 1: Like we used that acronym as a word all the time,
Speaker 1: but when you really think about, like someone had to
Speaker 1: go and investigate all of these things into trumine, that
Speaker 1: there was a very clear link between some of the
Speaker 1: work that was happening and some of the illnesses that
Speaker 1: were resulting, uh and document all of it so that
Speaker 1: there could be a clear case made. And it was
Speaker 1: largely uh, you know, her instigating it in the United
Speaker 1: States at least, there was, as we mentioned, uh, stuff
Speaker 1: going on in other parts of the globe where they
Speaker 1: had already begun that kind of research. But Alice Hamilton
Speaker 1: sure love her. I also noticed, in case anyone's curious,
Speaker 1: when you look at biographies of her, uh, she isn't
Speaker 1: very often addressed as Dr Alice Hamilton's and I think
Speaker 1: that's because she didn't go into practice as a medical doctor,
Speaker 1: but instead took this research route, but she did finish
Speaker 1: medical school and wasn't empty, so we kind of switched
Speaker 1: a little bit and included it periodically just to remind people. Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't think she went by Dr Hamilton's on
Speaker 1: the regular in her day to day life. Do you
Speaker 1: have some listener mail to take us out? I do,
Speaker 1: and it's actually about an episode that you did. But
Speaker 1: it's a piece of physical male so I thought I
Speaker 1: would read it so you would get to hear it
Speaker 1: since you're not here in Atlanta. Uh. It starts Hello,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy. I was delighted to hear your episode
Speaker 1: on Juliette Gordon Lowe. I've been a Girl Scout troop
Speaker 1: leader for three years, but have been involved for about
Speaker 1: eight years. I have two daughters and Girl Scouts. It
Speaker 1: is a major part of our lives. I love the
Speaker 1: program and I've seen my girls grow and developed through
Speaker 1: the various levels of scouting. Girl Scouting has also allowed
Speaker 1: me and my girls to travel with our troops through
Speaker 1: selling cookies. We have traveled to places that we could
Speaker 1: never have gone on our own family budget. This was
Speaker 1: such a fun episode for me to listen to you
Speaker 1: as a girl Scout leader. Part of Girl Scouting is
Speaker 1: teaching the girls the history of how Girl Scouts started
Speaker 1: and who Juliette Gordon Lowe was. I have learned many
Speaker 1: of the stories you shared about Juliette's life, but it
Speaker 1: was also interesting to hear other tidbits that get left out.
Speaker 1: I love Juliette Gordon Lowe and what she started. I'm
Speaker 1: inspired by her life because she was in her fifties
Speaker 1: before truly finding out what she loved. As somebody who
Speaker 1: just turned forty and still figuring out what life has
Speaker 1: a store for me, I looked to her to see
Speaker 1: that big things still await you even when you are older.
Speaker 1: I love that sentiment as well. I haven't closed a
Speaker 1: print of my favorite Juliet Gordon low quote, and I
Speaker 1: love this quote because of all the work I do
Speaker 1: with young girls and teenagers through the Girl Scouts. I
Speaker 1: also think it is the perfect quote for a history podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for the research you do and
Speaker 1: the entertaining episodes you and your team produce. I love
Speaker 1: your podcast. I've listened for years and I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to send you something. I'm glad I finally had the
Speaker 1: perfect reason to write in and share uh yours and
Speaker 1: girl Scouting Samantha, And she also writes ps Tracy wants
Speaker 1: a girl Scout, Always a girl scout. It's one of
Speaker 1: our sayings. And she wrote sent us to prints that
Speaker 1: just have a cute quote. This is the work of
Speaker 1: today as the history of tomorrow, and we are its makers.
Speaker 1: I love it so Thank you so much, Samantha, because
Speaker 1: we agree. Juliet Gordon Low is pretty cool, and the
Speaker 1: Scouts do a lot of good work. And I really
Speaker 1: really like the beautiful Prince again. The idea that you
Speaker 1: can find your life is calling it any age, me too.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you can
Speaker 1: do so at History Podcast at how stove works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us pretty much everywhere on social
Speaker 1: media as Missed in History and Missed in History dot
Speaker 1: Com is our website where you can come and see
Speaker 1: and listen to every episode that's ever existed. If you
Speaker 1: would like to subscribe to the podcast, we would like
Speaker 1: you to subscribe to the podcast. You can do that
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever it is you listen to podcasts. Stuffy. Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class is a production of I Heart Radios How
Speaker 1: stuff Works. For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit
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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.