Alice Hamilton

• Alice Hamilton
• Born: February 27, 1869
• Died: September 22, 1970

Physician, settlement worker, pioneer investigator of industrial diseases, and peace activist, was born in New York City, the second of four daughters. Her parents, Montgomery Hamilton and Gertrude (Pond) Hamilton, also had a son, born when Alice was seventeen years old. She was still a very young child when the Hamiltons moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to live on her grandmother’s estate.

A profound regard for learning pervaded the Hamilton home; all the sisters studied Greek, Latin, history, and literature. One sister, Edith, became a notable classicist. Alice also learned from her mother the meaning of freedom, and she was encouraged to think and act independently. At the same time, her mother helped her to develop sensitivity to the needs of others.

After a period of study at home, Alice Hamilton was a student for two years (1886-88) at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut. On completing her studies, she announced to her family that she had decided to become a physician, a profession that would provide both a livelihood and an opportunity to serve society. But first, she had to persuade her father that she was serious about a career in medicine. In order to acquire the science credits that would enable her to enter a first-rate medical school, Hamilton enrolled in the Fort Wayne College of Medicine. She quickly completed the required course of study and thus won her father’s approval to apply to the medical school at the University of Michigan, from which she obtained her M.D. in 1893.

Next, she interned briefly at the Northwestern Hospital for Women and Children in Minneapolis and at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. Her real scientific interests, however, led her back to the University of Michigan, where she became an assistant in Dr. F. G. Novy’s bacteriology laboratory. This experience prompted her to undertake further postgraduate studies in bacteriology and pathology in Leipzig and Munich (1895-96). Exposure to German belligerency, racism, and male chauvinism distressed her, and she returned to the United States to spend a postgraduate year at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. In the latter part of 1897, she left Baltimore for Chicago to become professor of pathology at the Woman’s Medical School of Northwestern University.

In Chicago, Hamilton came to know Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, the pioneer community settlement house. Hamilton became a resident of Hull House, a move that put her in touch with a world vastly different from anything she had known before: of talk of social justice, anarchism, and the rights of labor. Soon Hamilton became part of a group of women that included Addams, Julia Lathrop, and Florence Kelley, who were striving valiantly to make the world a better place.

For a time, Hamilton was caught up in the excitement that filled the air at Hull House. She established a well-baby clinic and employed her fluency in Italian and German to help in dealing with the problems her new neighbors brought to the settlement house. But while these activities provided her with some measure of satisfaction, at bottom she felt they were far from adequate. She felt split between the demands of Hull House and her scientific interests, a split that drained her energy. Then her sister Norah suffered a breakdown and this gave her an additional concern.

And while she was juggling these various responsibilities, the Woman’s Medical School closed its doors. In 1902 she took a job as a bacteriologist at the Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases. Here, she worked under the direction of Dr. Ludwig Hektoen, who encouraged her to write a number of scientific papers and to go to Paris to study at the Institut Pasteur. On her return, he urged her to join in the activities of Chicago’s medical world. During this period, Hamilton carried out an investigation of a typhoid epidemic in her neighborhood and also made a game, if futile, attempt to stop the widespread sale of cocaine in the streets around Hull House. Yet this, too, left her dissatisfied and discouraged. She began to feel she would never achieve any significant success in the field of science.

Hamilton was almost at the end of her patience when she came upon a copy of Sir Thomas Oliver’s study Dangerous Trades. She was dismayed to find that the lives of workers in industry were in constant jeopardy because of the poisons that permeated the workplaces. Pursuing her study of the problem further, Hamilton learned that whereas in some parts of Europe there were laws providing for inspection of factories, mills, and mines for the protection of workers against the effects of industrial poisons, this was not the case in the United States. Industry in this country was free to operate without regard for the workers’ health and safety. Finally, the medical profession itself was only dimly aware of the health problems caused by industrial poisons; only a few sparse references to the subject might be found in the medical literature.

Hamilton’s intense interest in the problem came to the attention of Governor Charles S. Deneen, who, in 1908, appointed her a member of the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases. Two years later, she was named supervisor of a survey of industrial poisons and she directed an in-depth epidemiological study of lead poisoning. She herself visited many of the victims of lead poisoning in their homes and interviewed hospital employees to learn how many cases of lead poisoning were referred for treatment. Hamilton and her team of investigators found that lead was used in some seventy-seven manufacturing procedures. As a result of the survey, a state law was enacted to provide certain safeguards and regular medical examinations to protect workers in those industries in which lead was used. The provisions of the law were significant steps forward in the movement to better the lives of workers in dangerous trades and served to highlight an era of progressive social action in the United States.

While the study of lead poisoning was under way, Hamilton investigated a condition called “phossy jaw” that blighted the lives of men and women who made lucifer matches. (Phossy jaw is caused by the penetration of phosphorus fumes through a decayed tooth and produces inflammation and necrosis of the jawbone.) This intensely painful and offensive condition results in permanent disfigurement, Hamilton noted in a report published in 1909.

One year later, she was a delegate from the United States to the International Congress on Occupational Diseases in Brussels. Describing her participation in the event, Hamilton said she felt she had made a “deplorable impression,” being unable to answer certain questions “since there is no industrial hygiene in our country.”

In 1911 she published her study on lead poisoning and that same year was appointed a special investigator for the Commissioner of Labor in the United States Department of Commerce. (The Department of Labor was established in 1912.) At forty-two, Hamilton had truly found her métier and soon she was recognized as the country’s foremost authority on lead poisoning and acknowledged as an expert on industrial diseases.

What astonished Hamilton’s coworkers and friends was the capacity this woman of upper-class background demonstrated as a scientific researcher and as a defender of the rights of the victims of a callous industrial system, most of them poor immigrants. And more and more, Hamilton’s sympathies—fed by her long association with Hull House—drew her into the political arena.

Like her friend Jane Addams, Hamilton was greatly affected by the outbreak of World War I. In 1915 she interrupted her scientific endeavors to accompany Addams to The Hague, where they attended the International Congress of Women, a meeting organized to press for an end to hostilities. Then the two women went on a mission to the capitals of the warring nations to present the peace proposals developed at The Hague meeting. Hamilton also visited Belgium, which had been ravaged by the war and was occupied by the German army. This experience strengthened her pacifist leanings.

Hamilton and Addams returned to the United States just as the country was preparing to enter the war in Europe. Hamilton resumed her investigations and this activity took her into various munitions plants, where she found evidence that picric acid, a chemical used in the manufacture of explosives, was the cause of many deaths and much illness among the workers. These findings did not sit well with the owners of the munitions plants and efforts were made to halt the investigation. Hamilton, for her part, was not intimidated; indeed, she became even more determined to pursue her course, and it was observed that on more than one occasion the undaunted scientific investigator had been seen sweeping past unfriendly guards to enter a plant, invoking her authority as an agent of the Labor Department.

The war opened employment in many industries to women, many of them with children they had to leave at home, uncared for. Hamilton felt that this was another problem that demanded relief, and she initiated a program to provide suitable supervision for the children of women factory workers.

Shortly after the armistice, Hamilton and Addams returned to Europe to attend the second International Congress of Women, after which they visited the scenes of devastation left by the war. Appalled by the sight of thousands of homeless families and hungry children, they determined that on their return to the United States they would immediately raise money to establish feeding stations in Europe.

In 1919 Hamilton was invited to become a faculty member—the first female professor—at the Harvard Medical School. She agreed to take the appointment as assistant professor of industrial medicine with the proviso that she be allowed sufficient time for fieldwork for the federal government. In addition, she continued to raise funds for famine relief in Europe despite criticism that labeled her as pro-German. But her situation at Harvard was not entirely satisfactory even from an academic point of view. Because she was a woman, she was denied admission to the Harvard Club, was refused permission to take part in commencement proceedings, and suffered other petty annoyances.

Hamilton was not deflected, however, and continued to make significant strides in her chosen direction. Together with several Harvard colleagues, she investigated the use of mercury in the felt hat industry, centered in Danbury, Connecticut. Exposure to mercury caused workers to behave in a bizarre fashion, a condition called “hatter’s shakes.” She also found that workers in rayon factories were exposed to carbon disulphide, a chemical solvent that produced behavior similar to that experienced by the hatters.

Her efforts in behalf of workers exposed to noxious chemicals were a strong factor in making her medical colleagues more interested in this problem. The introduction of state compensation laws forced owners to make their plants safer. A study she conducted for the Labor Department in 1921 showed that acute carbon monoxide poisoning occurred in the steel industry, in the manufacture of illuminating gases and coke, in the use of gas for smelting, in coal and zinc mining, and in automobile garages in which exhaust fumes accumulate.

As little by little Hamilton’s investigations began to produce beneficial results, her role changed. She devoted her energies to raising funds for research and field studies, and worked with reform, labor, and government groups interested in industrial diseases, a problem that became more prevalent as American industry increased its capacity.

In 1924 Hamilton was appointed a member of the Health Committee of the League of Nations, an agency that was the forerunner of the World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations. The same year, she put together the vast body of information she had accumulated and published a definitive volume, Industrial Poisons in the United States—the first American textbook on the subject. This publication reinforced her authoritative position in the world scientific community.

A second visit to Germany in 1933 prompted a series of articles in which Hamilton was sharply critical of nazism. And in 1940, when Hitler’s armies overran Western Europe, Hamilton set aside her long-held pacifist views to urge that the United States support the forces opposing the Nazis.

In 1935 Hamilton was sixty-six years old, bursting with energy and full of plans for continued scientific work, when Harvard asked her to retire. And from Chicago came word that her dear friend Jane Addams had died. Refusing an offer to take Addams’s place at Hull House, Hamilton with her sister Margaret went to live in the Hadlyme, Connecticut, home that they had bought many years before and in which they sometimes spent summer vacations.

Having had her income reduced by the loss of her post at Harvard, Hamilton willingly accepted an appointment as a consultant to the Department of Labor. She continued to be active, testifying at government hearings, writing for various publications, and serving as a leader of the national consumers’ movement. In 1938 she published an article in the American Scholar stating her conviction that “even if we reach a point at which all poisons and harmful dusts are brought under control, we shall still have to deal with that much more baffling and widespread industrial evil: fatigue of mind, body, and soul.”

In 1943 Hamilton published her autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades. Characteristically, the book chronicles more her concern about the dangers of industrial poisons and less the story of her personal life. But, in fact, she did have a personal life, one that revolved around her family and close friends. In 1949 she and Harriet L. Hardy, a specialist on beryllium poisoning, worked together to bring out a revised edition of Hamilton’s 1934 textbook, Industrial Toxicology.

Advancing age did not dim her interest in political affairs. Formerly an opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) because she believed it would eliminate protective legislation for women, she later became a strong advocate of the ERA. She also carried on an unremitting letter-writing campaign to persuade friends, newspaper editors, and politicians that the real danger to the civil liberties of the American people came not from outside the country but from reactionary elements inside the United States. She was among the very small minority of Americans who supported recognition of the People’s Republic of China before it became generally fashionable. And in the early days of the war in Vietnam, Hamilton added her signature to a call for the end to American intervention.

At eighty-four, Alice Hamilton summed up her achievements in her usually modest fashion: “For me, the satisfaction is that things are better now and I had some part in it.’’ Much honored and the recipient of numerous awards, Hamilton retained her faith in the possibility of “always doing good” till the end of her life. She died at home of a stroke at the age of 101 and was buried in her beloved Hadlyme.

Hamilton’s autobiographical writings include Exploring the Dangerous Trades (1943) and “Nineteen Years in the Poisonous Trades,” Harper’s, October 1929. Important source material may be found in the Alice Hamilton Papers and the Hamilton Family Papers in the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. The Countway Library of Medicine in Boston has information about her years at Harvard and a taped interview with Hamilton made in 1963 Biographies include M. P. Grant, Alice Hamilton: Pioneer Doctor in Industrial Medicine (1967); W. R. Slaight, “Alice Hamilton: First Lady of Industrial Medicine,” Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University (1974); E. S. Sergeant, “Alice Hamilton, M.D.: Crusader for Health in Industry,” Harper’s, May 1926; E. G. Evans, “People I Have Known: Alice Hamilton, M.D., Pioneer in a New Kind of Human Service,” The Progressive, November 29 and December 20, 1930; Journal of Occupational Medicine, February 1972 (special issue). See also Current Biography, May 1946, and Notable American Women: The Modern Period (1980).