Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Dr Alice Hamilton's is going to come up
Speaker 1: in one of our forthcoming episodes, along with her groundbreaking
Speaker 1: work in the field of occupational medicine, specifically the dangers
Speaker 1: of workplace and environmental exposures to lead. So we are
Speaker 1: bringing our episode on her out as Today's Saturday Classic.
Speaker 1: This originally came out on May six, so enjoy. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry and I'm Tracy be Wilson and Tracy. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is going to delve into the start of the
Speaker 1: study of occupational disease and the woman behind that beginning.
Speaker 1: That's an important field, it is, and it's one of
Speaker 1: those interesting things that we see is so important today
Speaker 1: but a hundred years ago not so much. Well. Occupational
Speaker 1: health has also been affecting people for much, much, much
Speaker 1: longer than it has existed as a field. Like yes,
Speaker 1: and it is one of those things that even while
Speaker 1: I was researching this episode, I found myself going, why
Speaker 1: why didn't anybody study this? There's pretty obvious cause and
Speaker 1: effect for some of this stuff. One, yeah, but a
Speaker 1: number of previous episode topics are going to get mentioned
Speaker 1: as we uh go through this story. Yes, uh so.
Speaker 1: Dr Alice Hamilton's was a trailblazer in science and medicine
Speaker 1: and she dedicated her life to improving the workplace standards
Speaker 1: for laborers in an effort to reduce illnesses that came
Speaker 1: ardly from working with toxic chemicals. And this episode was
Speaker 1: requested by our listener Emily, who actually sent us a
Speaker 1: book to kickstart research, which is very kind and it's
Speaker 1: actually a really fun book, So thank you, Emily. So
Speaker 1: on February sixty nine. Alice Hamilton's was born in New
Speaker 1: York City. Her parents were Montgomery Hamilton's and Gertrude Pond.
Speaker 1: 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 family 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
Speaker 1: fire errs, and having so many stories before running water
Speaker 1: that maids had to continually be carting water up flights
Speaker 1: of stairs. Montgomery, Gertrude and the children didn't live in
Speaker 1: Old House, although they spent a lot of their time there.
Speaker 1: They had a slightly smaller home on the same property
Speaker 1: called White House, and a home called Red House was
Speaker 1: where Alice's uncle lived. The one thing that Alice saw
Speaker 1: is a great benefit in those overly large homes 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, Montgomery,
Speaker 1: thought that the subjects that they taught at those schools
Speaker 1: were far too boring for his children. Uh Edith incidentally
Speaker 1: 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 later,
Speaker 1: when Alice was seventeen. Alice described this upbringing, being taught
Speaker 1: at home and not really having friends outside of their family,
Speaker 1: as one that turned them all into bookworms eventually. Quote
Speaker 1: and since we saw so little of any children outside
Speaker 1: our own family, the people we met in books became
Speaker 1: real to us. But to be clear, there were other
Speaker 1: children around. Eleven cousins lived on the property where old
Speaker 1: house and the other home set, so sort of a
Speaker 1: giant family compound, kind of yes, uh, And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until Alice was a teenager of seventeen that she received
Speaker 1: any formal education when she attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: And that was and still is a private preparatory school
Speaker 1: in Connecticut, and Alice's time there was the prelude to
Speaker 1: entering the University of Michigan Medical School. Alice thought that
Speaker 1: the school was awful, and she selected courses that would
Speaker 1: either be fairly easy. She already had a lot of
Speaker 1: linguistics education from her parents, so she took a lot
Speaker 1: of that, or she picked courses for which she could
Speaker 1: just memorize the needed information without really digesting and understanding it.
Speaker 1: But that meant that when she decided to go into medicine,
Speaker 1: she was woefully lacking. She needed to take extra classes
Speaker 1: to get properly prepared for it. She had to take physics, chemistry, biology,
Speaker 1: and anatomy courses after she finished at Miss Porter's. Once
Speaker 1: those were complete, she enrolled at the University of Michigan.
Speaker 1: Even though this was decades after Elizabeth Blackwell became the
Speaker 1: first woman to graduate for medical school in the United States,
Speaker 1: it was still pretty unusual for a woman to pursue
Speaker 1: a career as a physician, but it turned out that
Speaker 1: Alice really loved both the freedom and the challenge of
Speaker 1: being on her own and learning so much about clinical
Speaker 1: and lab work. Eventually, she decided she wanted to do
Speaker 1: research instead of practice me uson and when she finished
Speaker 1: medical school in eight she worked as an intern in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: at the Hospital for Women and Children, and after two
Speaker 1: months there, she moved to her next training position, this
Speaker 1: time at the New England Hospital for Women and Children,
Speaker 1: which is located near Boston. Her education continued after that.
Speaker 1: She studied in Leipzig and Munich over the course of
Speaker 1: a year. Because Germany was really where her chosen fields
Speaker 1: of bacteriology and pathology were most advanced. This was a
Speaker 1: tricky thing for her to negotiate because German schools were
Speaker 1: not open to women at that time. Alice and her
Speaker 1: sister Edith, who traveled to Germany with her, had to
Speaker 1: promise that they would be invisible to the male students.
Speaker 1: After gaining a solid level of knowledge in Europe, Alice
Speaker 1: came back to the United States to attend Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: University for a year. Once all of that schooling was done,
Speaker 1: Hamilton made the switch in roles from student to educator,
Speaker 1: and she began teaching at the Northwestern Universities Women's Metal
Speaker 1: Cool School. In addition to her teaching, she also joined
Speaker 1: Chicago's Hull House and moved in there. That is the
Speaker 1: settlement house founded by Jane Adams that we discussed in
Speaker 1: our episode about Adams. Alice Hamilton has actually mentioned very
Speaker 1: briefly in that episode, and as part of her life
Speaker 1: at Hull House, Alice founded a well baby clinic for
Speaker 1: the community, and she also made the connection between typhoid
Speaker 1: spread and poor sewage disposal during the nineteen two epidemic
Speaker 1: in Chicago. Hull House made a big impact on Alice,
Speaker 1: and her ongoing work there really shaped her worldview. She
Speaker 1: once famously said of it quote, life in a settlement
Speaker 1: does several things to you. Among others, it teaches you
Speaker 1: that education and culture have little to do with real wisdom,
Speaker 1: the wisdom that comes from experiences. And it was during
Speaker 1: this work at Hull House and offering medical treatment and
Speaker 1: assistance to the poor families in the community, that Alice
Speaker 1: started to see firsthand just how closely linked disease was
Speaker 1: to poverty, and she started to realized just how dangerous
Speaker 1: working conditions were for the poor, who were often immigrants
Speaker 1: with little power to improve their workplaces or to move
Speaker 1: into less hazardous careers. In she wrote her first paper
Speaker 1: on the subject of occupational disease, and her works importance
Speaker 1: and her level of knowledge on the topic, we're pretty
Speaker 1: quickly acknowledged this is the time when workers in the
Speaker 1: United States were routinely handling toxic substances with little to
Speaker 1: no protection. We have talked on the podcast before about
Speaker 1: things like fossy jaw and mercury poisoning, and those were
Speaker 1: not uncommon among poor laborers, but in the United States
Speaker 1: there really wasn't any formal work being done to study
Speaker 1: these kinds of issues in the workplace. And we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the next stage in Hamilton's career, which
Speaker 1: came because of the recognition that she achieved for that
Speaker 1: early work in studying occupational disease. But first we'll pause
Speaker 1: and have a little of sponsor break. In Alice Hamilton's
Speaker 1: was appointed to lead an Occupational Disease Commission which was
Speaker 1: formed by Illinois Governor Charles Deneen, and that commission was
Speaker 1: established to study industrial disease. It was the first of
Speaker 1: its kind in the United States, Lead, arsenic, carbon monoxide, brass, cyanides,
Speaker 1: and turpentine were all to be studied over the course
Speaker 1: of a year per the Governor's office, and Hamilton's, in
Speaker 1: addition to being the leader of this initiative, focused on
Speaker 1: lead in particular, and so she started researching the connection
Speaker 1: between industry and disease, pioneering the field of occupational epidemiology.
Speaker 1: She later wrote quote, it was while I was living
Speaker 1: in Hull House and working in bacteriological research that the
Speaker 1: opportunity came to me to investigate the dangerous trades of Illinois,
Speaker 1: not those where violent accidents occurred, but those with the
Speaker 1: less spectacular hazard of sickness from some industrial poison. It
Speaker 1: was a voyage of explor ration that we undertook our
Speaker 1: little group of physicians and student assistants, for nobody in
Speaker 1: Illinois knew even then where we should make our investigation
Speaker 1: beyond a few notorious led trades. American medical authorities had
Speaker 1: never taken industrial diseases seriously. The American Medical Associations had
Speaker 1: never held a meeting on the subject, and while European
Speaker 1: journals were full of articles on industrial poisoning, the number
Speaker 1: published in American medical journals up to nineteen ten could
Speaker 1: be counted on one's fingers, and the work on this
Speaker 1: project was extensive. Dr Hamilton's and her team spoke with
Speaker 1: laborers and pharmacists about factory conditions and instances of lead poisoning.
Speaker 1: They also reviewed medical records and hospitals, and they went
Speaker 1: to factories to see for themselves what the conditions were like. And,
Speaker 1: as you might suspect, this line of investigation was not
Speaker 1: exactly welcomed by some of the people in power in
Speaker 1: the industries that she wanted to research. In her autobiography,
Speaker 1: she describes some of the attitudes about illness and injury
Speaker 1: that she encountered. Quote, as I look back, some striking
Speaker 1: pictures come to me of that anarchic period. One is
Speaker 1: the picture of the works manager of a big white
Speaker 1: lead plant, a gentleman of breeding and something of a philanthropist.
Speaker 1: He is looking at me indignantly and exclaiming, why that
Speaker 1: sounds as if you think that when a man gets
Speaker 1: lead poisoning in my plant, I ought to be held responsible.
Speaker 1: Another is that of a Hungarian woman at Hull House
Speaker 1: telling me of a terrible accident and a steel mill
Speaker 1: on the South Shore in which her husband had been injured.
Speaker 1: He and the other victims were being held in communicado
Speaker 1: and the company hospital. No one was allowed to see them.
Speaker 1: She knew nothing except that her husband was not dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she has a lot of accounts. If you read her autobiography,
Speaker 1: there are many similar stories that she witnessed. A lot
Speaker 1: of Hamilton's writing on the issues she was researching at
Speaker 1: this time mentions the various people who were ignorant and
Speaker 1: indifferent in allowing danger of circumstances to continue to be
Speaker 1: the norm in factories, from the owners to the foreman,
Speaker 1: to the company doctors, and even the workers. She wrote quote,
Speaker 1: the employers could, if they wished, shut their eyes to
Speaker 1: the dangers their workmen faced, for nobody held them responsible,
Speaker 1: while the workers accepted the risks with fatalistic submissiveness as
Speaker 1: part of the price one must pay for being poor.
Speaker 1: She also cataloged the various excuses she was given by
Speaker 1: employers and her investigations 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 ants 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 then in some cases foreman
Speaker 1: or factory owners already had their own worries about employee health,
Speaker 1: and they were actually really glad to have someone helping
Speaker 1: them figure out the problem. This commission wasn't intended to
Speaker 1: be a whistleblowing operation, though Alice wasn't supposed to identify
Speaker 1: any of the factories and her reports by name or
Speaker 1: give details that could identify them, and she submitted the
Speaker 1: reports in the manner that was requested. She wasn't completely
Speaker 1: comfortable with that, though. She worried that people weren't being
Speaker 1: helped in a direct way while government agencies reviewed the
Speaker 1: findings of the report. So she started a habit of
Speaker 1: telling the men in charge of the factories where she
Speaker 1: found concern exactly what she felt was wrong. She gave
Speaker 1: these men her own recommendations for the simple steps they
Speaker 1: might take to improve conditions, and later she wrote about
Speaker 1: how surprised she was that this informal quote primitive method
Speaker 1: actually worked. In one case, she had visited a white
Speaker 1: lead works that was open with the intent of being safe,
Speaker 1: but then there hadn't been a protocol in place to
Speaker 1: remove waste materials from production, and there were piles of
Speaker 1: it around the factory, and she spoke to the manager,
Speaker 1: but he was not very enthused about being told what
Speaker 1: to do. The plant owner wasn't really an option. He
Speaker 1: was elderly and not really actively involved in running the factory.
Speaker 1: But then she remembered that she actually knew the owner's daughter.
Speaker 1: The two women had gone to school together, and so
Speaker 1: by reaching out through that channel, Alice was able to
Speaker 1: explain to her former schoolmate problems going on in the
Speaker 1: lead works and encourage a little bit of change, and
Speaker 1: that worked. The factory not only changed its operating procedures
Speaker 1: to include removal of the waste products on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Leadership actually asked Alice to stop by periodically and inspect
Speaker 1: things for them and just touch base. And she continued
Speaker 1: to develop relationships both through these kinds of ways and
Speaker 1: with managers and foremen as often as possible so that
Speaker 1: she could keep their discussions about safety cordial. And she
Speaker 1: continued to leverage any other means she could to enact
Speaker 1: change in ways that her government work couldn't really do. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: though the report that Alice compiled with her colleagues did
Speaker 1: have significant impact. It made a clear case showing that
Speaker 1: illnesses were often the result of on the job conditions.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eleven, the state of Illinois pass legislation that
Speaker 1: required three things of employers. One they had to follow
Speaker 1: new safety guidelines to minimize the risk of occupational disease. Two,
Speaker 1: if they employed workers in so called dangerous trades, they
Speaker 1: had to provide monthly health screening for those employees. And three,
Speaker 1: they had to report any illnesses to the Department of
Speaker 1: Factory inspection. In nineteen eleven, after her work with the
Speaker 1: State of Illinois Commission concluded, Alice Hamilton was asked to
Speaker 1: serve as a special investigator for the Federal Department of
Speaker 1: Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics because of the reputation she
Speaker 1: had earned for her work at the state level, and
Speaker 1: she served in that role for almost a decade and
Speaker 1: continued her study and investigation of lead in industry, as
Speaker 1: well as rubber, viscoast, rayon, and other substances. Hamilton's continued
Speaker 1: to break barriers in her career, and we will get
Speaker 1: to another of those right after we pause for one
Speaker 1: of the sponsors that keeps us going. During World War One,
Speaker 1: Hamilton's turned her attentions to the industries associated with war
Speaker 1: for investigation. She studied factories where munitions were made, and
Speaker 1: she submitted reports outlining the dangers of the various chemicals
Speaker 1: involved and how those dangers might be addressed for worker safety.
Speaker 1: Many safety procedures were established because of the work she
Speaker 1: did during those years. She also commented at one point
Speaker 1: that she felt like because the government was so quick
Speaker 1: to act on those recommendations, it kind of gave her
Speaker 1: work a level of credibility that it hadn't really had before.
Speaker 1: Nearing the end of her work in the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Labor Statistics, Hamilton's was offered a position teaching at Harvard
Speaker 1: Medical School as an assistant professor of Industrial Medicine. That
Speaker 1: made her the first woman on the faculty there, and
Speaker 1: there's some irony in that appointment. The school wasn't accepting
Speaker 1: women as students at the time. When she was interviewed
Speaker 1: on the subject, Alice Hamilton was always quick to point
Speaker 1: out that she shouldn't have been the first woman on
Speaker 1: the faculty and she was I was like, yes, I
Speaker 1: am uh. We should have been doing this before. Uh.
Speaker 1: And despite the attention that her groundbreaking position gained the school,
Speaker 1: she was denied a number of benefits that were available
Speaker 1: to other faculty members. For example, she wasn't allowed into
Speaker 1: the faculty club, and she wasn't allowed to participate in
Speaker 1: the commencement procession, and she would not receive any football tickets.
Speaker 1: Those were all benefits that any other faculty member would
Speaker 1: have had. But as part of her hiring negotiation, Dr
Speaker 1: Hamilton's wanted to teach only one semester each year, and
Speaker 1: that way the remainder of the year would be spent
Speaker 1: on her work at Hull House and on her ongoing
Speaker 1: research into toxicology. Alice was appointed to the League of
Speaker 1: Nations Health Committee that made her the only woman chosen
Speaker 1: for it. That same year, she was invited to the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union to offer her expertise on the management and
Speaker 1: treatment of occupational disease. There, Hamilton's continued to use her
Speaker 1: various positions to work not just for the betterment of
Speaker 1: occupational health, but also for social reform and healthcare. Her
Speaker 1: work with impoverished communities continued to drive her efforts, including
Speaker 1: work in epidemic disease, infant mortality reduction, and addiction, and
Speaker 1: she also advocated for family planning at a time when
Speaker 1: that was not a very welcome topic because she saw
Speaker 1: how much women in impoverished communities really didn't have education
Speaker 1: on the matter, and also in some cases their health
Speaker 1: was put at risk by having pregnancy after pregnancy, after pregnancy.
Speaker 1: She also worked in the interest of women's labor rights,
Speaker 1: even when that position stood in opposition to legislation that
Speaker 1: was introduced for equal rights. Hamilton was concerned that the
Speaker 1: wording of bills introduced for equality in the workplace would
Speaker 1: diminish protections for women in the workplace, so she became
Speaker 1: an advocate for women in labor industries like textile mills,
Speaker 1: food packaging and processing plants, as well as hospitality. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, she became an advocate for the Equal
Speaker 1: Rights Amendment once she felt that equality legislation wouldn't diminish
Speaker 1: protections for women at work, and part of the reason
Speaker 1: she was so adamant about those protections was that she
Speaker 1: had collected data that showed that there were ways in
Speaker 1: which women were more vulnerable than men when it came
Speaker 1: to certain issues of industrial poisoning. Her research indicated that
Speaker 1: women were more susceptible, particularly to lead poisoning, and all
Speaker 1: industrial poisonings had the added complication of potentially causing birth
Speaker 1: defects and or sterility. In she wrote the first text
Speaker 1: on toxicology, titled Industrial Poisons in the United States. Nine
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen thirty four, she wrote another text book,
Speaker 1: Industrial Toxicology. The year after Industrial Toxicology was first published,
Speaker 1: Hamilton's time at Harvard ended because she reached mandatory retirement
Speaker 1: age in the sixteen years that she was there. She
Speaker 1: was never promoted beyond the title of assistant professor, and
Speaker 1: instead had been employed on a series of three year
Speaker 1: contracts that renewed over and over. After leaving Harvard, Hamilton's,
Speaker 1: who was sixty six at the time, hadn't actually retired
Speaker 1: from her life's work. She moved to Haadline, Connecticut with
Speaker 1: her sister Margaret, who, like all four of the Hamilton's sisters,
Speaker 1: had not married, and Alice continued to consult on the
Speaker 1: topic of toxicology in industrial settings, including acting as an
Speaker 1: advisor to New York State Industrial Commissioner Francis Perkins. Even
Speaker 1: outside of consulting, Dr Hamilton's stayed busy. In nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: she wrote her autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades. She revised
Speaker 1: her textbook Industrial Toxicology in nineteen forty nine when she
Speaker 1: was eighty and as Joseph McCarthy stirred up the Second
Speaker 1: Red Scare in the u s and the late forties
Speaker 1: and early fifties, she spoke out against it. At that
Speaker 1: point she was in her eighties. That activism continued into
Speaker 1: her nineties, when she wrote to President Kennedy to urge
Speaker 1: him to get American troops out of Vietnam. On February
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. Hamilton's celebrated her one birthday the following year.
Speaker 1: She died on September twenty, nineteen seventy, after having a stroke.
Speaker 1: Three months after her death, on December nineteen seventy, the
Speaker 1: Occupational Safety and Health Act of nineteen seventy became law.
Speaker 1: It's opening paragraph reads, an Act to assure safe and
Speaker 1: healthful working conditions for working men and women, by authorizing
Speaker 1: enforcement of the standards developed into the Act, by assisting
Speaker 1: and encouraging the States and their efforts to assure safe
Speaker 1: and healthiple working conditions, by providing for research, information, education,
Speaker 1: and training in the field of occupational safety and health,
Speaker 1: and for other purposes. Yes, so that was kind of
Speaker 1: the culmination of her life's work, and she just missed
Speaker 1: seeing it happened by a few months. Today, the Centers
Speaker 1: for Disease Control and Prevention give out the Alice B.
Speaker 1: Hamilton's Awards for Occupational Safety and Health, and on her
Speaker 1: birthday in ven the National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Speaker 1: Health Ridge Avenue Facility in Cincinnati, Ohio was dedicated to
Speaker 1: her memory and named the Alice Hamilton's Laboratory. For Occupational
Speaker 1: Safety and Health. In two thousand to the American Chemical
Speaker 1: Society designated Alice Hamilton's and her work in industrial medicine
Speaker 1: a National Historic Chemical Landmark. And to close, I wanted
Speaker 1: to offer up a fairly famous quote from Dr Allis
Speaker 1: Hamilton's autobiography, and it reads, quote I chose medicine not
Speaker 1: because I was scientifically minded, for I was deeply ignorant
Speaker 1: of science. I chose it because as a doctor, I
Speaker 1: could go anywhere I pleased, too far off lands or
Speaker 1: to city slums, and be quite sure I could be
Speaker 1: of use anywhere. That's such a great sentiment, it is,
Speaker 1: And it's like her heaps me too. Uh. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I think is really interesting about her
Speaker 1: story is that it's sort of it shows how when
Speaker 1: there's progress in some field, it's not like there's a
Speaker 1: switch that gets flipped where everything is fixed now, like
Speaker 1: the Radium girls were after this, and like I think
Speaker 1: she was part of some of the investigation of that,
Speaker 1: and like that was well after Illinois had passed laws
Speaker 1: related to this. Like it's it's an example of sort
Speaker 1: of the trajectory of things that that take a while.
Speaker 1: And of course there are plenty of occupational issues that
Speaker 1: still exists today. Yeah. In her autobiography, which we mentioned
Speaker 1: was written in the forties, there's a funny moment where
Speaker 1: she talks about how like to her, it's almost amusing
Speaker 1: that people started using like the the safety first wording,
Speaker 1: when she's like, when I started doing this, that would
Speaker 1: have been like an athema. Nobody would have said those words.
Speaker 1: So she was seeing the progress and could appreciate her
Speaker 1: impact even if she did not get to see that
Speaker 1: the OSHA law UM finally signed into reality. That law
Speaker 1: is older than I thought it was. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things I think people don't always know,
Speaker 1: like the origin point for OSHA, Like we used that
Speaker 1: acronym as a word all the time, But when you
Speaker 1: really think about, like someone had to go and investigate
Speaker 1: all of these things into TRUM and that there was
Speaker 1: a very clear link between some of the work that
Speaker 1: was happening and some of the illnesses that were resulting,
Speaker 1: uh and document all of it so that there could
Speaker 1: be a clear case made. And it was largely uh,
Speaker 1: you know, her instigating it in the United States at least,
Speaker 1: there was, as we mentioned, uh, stuff going on in
Speaker 1: other parts of the globe where they had already begun
Speaker 1: that kind of research. But Alice Hilton sure love her.
Speaker 1: I also noticed, in case anyone's curious, when you look
Speaker 1: at by agraphies of her, Uh, she isn't very often
Speaker 1: addressed as Dr Alice Hamilton's and I think that's because
Speaker 1: she didn't go into practice as a medical doctor but
Speaker 1: instead took this research route. But she did finish medical
Speaker 1: school and wasn't mp D, 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. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode
Speaker 1: is out of the archive, if you heard an email
Speaker 1: address or a Facebook U r L or something similar
Speaker 1: over the course of the show, that could be obsolete. Now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at I heart
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