Big Apple History . New York Living . Better Health for All


	Nurse examining poor children, c. 1900-1910

You didn't have to be a doctor to see the problem. Crowd thousands of people into a small space, house them in poorly ventilated buildings, force them to work long hours with little sleep, and what do you get? Respiratory disease. Between them, tuberculosis and pneumonia killed an average of 15,000 to 20,000 New Yorkers every year between 1900 and 1915.

NNew York may have been an incubator for disease but it was also the nation's laboratory for public health. New York City's list of medical firsts is an impressive one: the bacteriological laboratory (1892); public baths (1901); visiting public health officials (1902); child hygiene programs (1908); water chlorination (1911); and pasteurization of milk (1912) all took place first in New York City, at least in part because the public health situation was so bad!

Many of these measures were pushed by women reformers. Lillian Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement House, started the first visiting nurse service. Lina Rogers was hired as the city's first public health nurse. S. Josephine Baker became the first director of the child hygiene program. And, despite great controversy, Margaret Sanger opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916.

Illustration: Courtesy of Brown Brothers, Sterling, Pa.