Public Health, Past and Present: Stories from Brooklyn Historical Society

Public Health, Past and Present: Stories from BHS Library and Archives

Julie Golia & Robin Katz

Brooklyn Historical Society

September 19, 2012

History & Public Health

• Tracing the history of public health through BHS materials

– Changing approaches to sickness and sanitation

– Impact of urban growth on public health

– Relationship between war, peace, health

– Changing role of health institutions

– Organizing and activism

• How historical forces affect health today

Students and Faculty in the Archives ● Brooklyn Historical Society

A Different Kind of Library


A Different Kind of Library

• Collecting Focus

– History of Brooklyn and Long Island

• Policies and Procedures

• Special Collections and Archives

– Primary and secondary sources

• Research at our library also requires the LIU Library, other sources


Primary Sources

• What is a primary source?

• Why use primary sources?

• Challenges of using primary sources

• Challenges of finding the right sources


Brooklyn’s Diverse History

• Native American and Dutch origins

• British-occupied during Revolution

• Robust agricultural economy

• Growth of neighborhoods and industrial waterfront

• Immigration and diversity

• 20th century decline and regeneration


Native Americans & Disease



• Lenape Indians, Dutch settlers, and land dispossession

• 1636, first land transaction between Dutch settler and Canarsee Indians

• Biological transactions: smallpox

• By early 18th century, decimated Lenape population



• sd


During his 1679 visit to New York, Jasper Danckaerts recorded in his diary that smallpox had greatly reduced the populations of Native Americans in Brooklyn. Drawing of Native American woman, 1679; Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter journals, 1974.024; Brooklyn Historical Society.


BHS libraries chronicle land transactions between European settlers and Native Americans. A 1909 typescript deed documenting the 1665 sale of land in present-day Brooklyn.

Deed, 1665 (copy 1909); American

Indians and English settlers Gravesend deed, 1977.594; Brooklyn Historical Society.


War & Disease


War & Disease

• Revolutionary War: 8,000 Americans die in battle; upwards of 18,000 of disease

– Deplorable conditions of prisons

– Prison ships like the “Jersey”

– 11,500 die in NYC and Brooklyn

• Civil War: Andersonville prison

• Roots of wartime disease: supply lines, facilities, bureaucracy, personnel


War & Disease

Old Jersey Prison Ship

Old Jersey Prison Ship /

Wallabout bay, Brooklyn, N.Y., circa 1888; Prints collection, V1973.6.555; Brooklyn Historical Society.


War & Disease

“The next disgusting object which met my sight was a man suffering with the small pox; and in a few minutes, I found myself surrounded by many others, labouring under the same disease, in every stage of its progress.”

Greene, Albert. Recollections of the Jersey prison ship : from the manuscript of Capt. Thomas Dring prisoner. Bedford, MA: Applewood Books; Chester, CT: Distributed by the Globe Pequot Press, 1992.


War & Disease

Andersonville Prison, Andersonville, Georgia, 1864

“500 prisoners for weeks suffering of disease in almost every form evident to man …

Nakedness, in many instances mental depression and in many instances melancholy.”

“Surrounding circumstances positively preclude the possibility of rendering thus efficient services demanded by suffering humanity …”

Daily Medical Officer Report, August 12, 1864; Civil War collection, 1977.200, Box 1, Folder 3; Brooklyn Historical Society.


War & Disease

Brooklyn Industry and War

• Manufacturing weapons, manufacturing healing – Ether and Battleships

– Edward R. Squibb

– Brooklyn Navy Yard

• Brooklynites build machinery of death for battlefields far away


Yellow Fever, Cholera & Urban Growth



• Early 19th century urban growth in Brooklyn and NYC

– Importance of waterways bringing in people, goods, and disease

• Increasing population density, growing sanitation problems, epidemic disease

• Yellow Fever, Cholera in Brooklyn and NYC

– 1822 Yellow Fever outbreak – hard to track #s

– 1832 Cholera hits New York: 5,000 dead



Gabriel Furman: Amateur Epidemiologist


Gabriel Furman papers, ARC.190, vol. 3, page 3-58; Brooklyn Historical Society.


Mapping the source of disease.


Gabriel Furman papers, ARC.190, vol. 3, page 3-58; Brooklyn Historical Society.



• Examples of student public health projects at BHS

• Comparisons of cholera/venereal disease

• 19th century natural cancer treatment vs. today’s pharmaceutical industry

• History of opium regulation in 19th century

• Recreations of 19th century cures and remedies

For more on the projects see: http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/fellowship2012

http://safa.brooklynhistory.org/fellowship2012



Parks & Wellness


Parks & Wellness

• Role of immigration in population growth

• 1855: 47% of Brooklynites foreign born

• How to ameliorate population density in urban space?

• Public parks as “a breathing place”

• 1847: Washington Park (Ft. Greene Park)

• 1867: Prospect Park


Parks & Wellness

Note the park’s proximity to Brooklyn Navy Yard.


J. B. Beers & Co., Farm Line Maps of the City of Brooklyn, from Official Records & Surveys. New York: J. B. Beers, 1874; Atlas 8, Brooklyn Historical Society.

Parks & Wellness

“Of course no man, with a clear eye to things, can deny the immensely sanative influence, in a city, of plentiful open grounds …. The extensive class of diseases called epidemics and endemics are both ameliorated (perhaps would be prevented, in many cases,) by a free circulation of air – and the absence of the clattered up buildings and structures that thrift … crams into great cities.”

Walt Whitman, editor

Brooklyn Eagle, June 20, 1846, page 2.

Online access to the Brooklyn Eagle (October 26, 1841 to December 31, 1902) through Brooklyn Public Library http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org


http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/

Selling Homes, Selling Health



• Brooklyn: agricultural roots

– As late as 1890s: Brooklyn 2nd largest supplier of produce to NYC

• Decline of agriculture: real estate boom

• Marketing Brooklyn against the evils of Manhattan

• Growth of transportation infrastructure



Blythebourne, New Utrecht, Brooklyn

Property of Blythebourne

Improvement Co. at Bath Beach Junction, Kings Co., L.I. 1887? Brooklyn Historical Society map collection.



Map versos offer great evidence about real estate marketing.

Property of Blythebourne Improvement Co. at Bath Beach Junction, Kings Co., L.I.

1887? Brooklyn Historical Society map collection.



Prospect Park fueled a real estate boom in neighboring areas like Park Slope and Flatbush.


Northrop, Henry Sanford, Entrance to Prospect Park, 1918; Works on Paper, M1975.295.21; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Dealing with Disease



• Twentieth-century epidemics

– Polio outbreak 1916: ~ 2,000 deaths NYC

– Spanish influenza 1918: ~ 30,000 deaths NYC

• As transportation lines link parts of New York closer together, it becomes easier for disease to spread



• Creating institutions, infrastructures to deal with health and disease

• Hospitals

• Charities and reform movements

– Women play important role

• Professionalization of medicine

• Invention and production of penicillin



Penicillin Production in Brooklyn: the Pfizer Collections

Founded in Brooklyn in 1849, Pfizer is now one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Over 20 past and current employees of the Brooklyn plant –where mass production of penicillin was first discovered were interviewed on the occasion of the closing of this historic manufacturing plant. On June 12, 2008, Pfizer's Brooklyn plant was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the New York Section of the American Chemical Society for its breakthrough developments in Deep-Tank Fermentation that made the mass production of penicillin possible.

Pfizer Brooklyn Oral History collection, 2008.029; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Pfizer Inc. collection, ARC.084; Brooklyn Historical Society.


Dealing With Disease

HEALTH CARE FACILITIES

• Brooklyn hospital records, ARC.225

• Brooklyn hospitals and health services organizations collection, ARC.141

• Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital records, 1985.005

• Long Island College Hospital collection, ARC.139

• Methodist Episcopal Hospital annual reports and ephemera collection, ARC.155

• Norwegian Lutheran Deaconesses' Home and Hospital annual reports and receipts, ARC.246

• Viscount and Viscountess Halifax photographs of Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn, 1974.017

• Brooklyn Home for Consumptives Annual Report, 1985.099

MEDICAL SOCIETY

• Medical Society of the County of Kings collection, 1985.116

CHARITIES

• Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities collection, 1985.097

• Brooklyn charitable organizations for the aged publications, 1985.105

• Church Charity Foundation of Long Island publications, 1985.113


Dealing With Disease

Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair

Through the Women’s Relief Association of Brooklyn, middle-class women played a major role in raising money for the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Their 1864 Sanitary Fair raised $400,000 – more than any other organization in the country.

Collection of Brooklyn, N.Y., Civil War relief associations, ARC.245; Brooklyn Historical Society.


Sewage and Sanitation


Sewage and Sanitation

• Using and interpreting sources to understand sanitation-health relationship

• Pollution, health, land use: Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek

• Materials at BHS include: – Maps and atlases

– Government reports

– Archeological papers

– Bureau of Sewer records

– Sewer Construction photos


Public Health & Civil Rights



• 20th c. Brooklyn: deindustrialization, urban flight

• Diversification of Brooklyn

– Changing immigration patterns

– African Americans & the Great Migration

• Public housing

• Civil Rights movement in the north: equitable city services


Public Health & Civil Rights Tracking neighborhoods

and disease

Maps and Charts prepared by the Slum Clearance Committee of New York, 1933-1934; Plate 40; Brooklyn Historical Society.



Photograph of Gates & Lewis Avenues, September 1962; Arnie Goldwag Brooklyn

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) collection, ARC.002, box 1, folder 5; Brooklyn Historical Society.


General Resources at BHS

• Maps and atlases

• Common Council minutes

• Directories

• Brooklyn and Long Island scrapbooks (indexed newspaper clippings)


Start Research at Home

• Library catalog (BobCat)

– individual, published items: books, maps, etc.

• Finding aids

– archival collections

• Catablog (Emma)

– library collections described as a whole

– subject guides

– also: archival collections

• Online image gallery

http://www.brooklynhistory.org/library/search.html




Visit BHS

• Museum: Wednesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 5:00pm

Admission is free with LIU student/faculty/staff ID

• Library: Wednesday – Friday, 1:00 – 5:00pm

• Make appointments one week before library visit at http://www.brooklynhistory.org/library/ask.html

to use archival material or rare books and maps

128 Pierrepont St.

Brooklyn, NY 11201

718-444-2111


http://www.brooklynhistory.org/library/ask.html

Thank You


• Julie Golia, Ph.D.

Public Historian

Co-Director, Students and Faculty in the Archives

[email protected]

• Robin M. Katz

Outreach & Public Services Archivist

Co-Director, Students and Faculty in the Archives

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Public Health, Past and Present: Stories from Brooklyn Historical Society

Education

Transcript of Public Health, Past and Present: Stories from Brooklyn Historical Society