Alice Hamilton was one of those people who used skill to shape ethical motive . Basic conception like sanitisation , worker safety , and proper chemical disposal be because she test there was no other choice . She was also one of the first to speak out about the growing threat of Nazi Germany .
Technically a biochemist , Hamilton is a science all - star who deserve to be far more famous than she is . She was smart enough to be the first adult female to be appoint an assistant prof at Harvard Medical School , and outspoken enough to be well-nigh cast off out multiple times during her multi - decade career . Once , sheput cocain in her own eyeballsto prove to juries that drug dealers were prove to trade the white powder to school children . But she spent most of her careerdecrying her own most notable experimentation .
When she ’d worked in Chicago during a typhoid epidemic , she ’d shown that flies could behave enteric fever between overladen , filthy communal privies and cramp kitchen without window screens . Her oeuvre helped kickstart laws meant to keep landlord from scant on sanitisation or overcrowd their buildings .
Yet Hamilton later found out that her experiment , while aright done , did not uncover the source of the epidemic . A sewer course had break open and the metropolis had covered it up . Whenever anyone credited her with solve the mystery of the typhoid epidemic — often at the beginning of a language introducing her — she would at once correct them . She was the first to address out against herself .
She was the first to speak outagainst nearly anything . She helped examine thatradium was poisoningwatch - painter ( so - called “ radium fille ” ) . She helped prove that carbon paper monoxide was poison blade workers . She help prove that mercury was envenom hatters . She helped prove that excessive use of jackhammers cause “ dead finger ” in construction actor . And she facilitate show that making lead pigment was risky for prole , especially child worker . Most importantly , she spoke in public and loudly about what she had test . The most basic proletarian ’s safety concept were pioneered by Alice Hamilton .
During her college years she ’d traveled to Germany with her sister . After World War I , she went back , returning home to rally the great unwashed to furnish intellectual nourishment for the starving Germans . Hamilton had been against entranceway into World War I , considering pro - war stances militaristic and useless . Many Americans were not impressed with the fact that the person who peck them about staying out of Germany was asking for aid for the citizenry who had been killing American soldiers . Pressure get on on Harvard to terminate her professorship , which , to their credit , they did not .
Germany regain . Hamilton sound back . And she come back with even more complaint , which also proved to be justified . In 1933,she drop a line widely about the ascension of the Nazi company , decrying its anti-Semitism and militarism , and note the party ’s peculiar appeal to early days culture .
She also wrote aboutsomething many societal crusaders of her time neglected . Hamilton had worked all her life history , in authorities and in academe , and her German twin were getting fired from both spheres . Nazi insurance policy promoted the concept of motherhood above all else . Hamilton head out that this was n’t just sexism , it was a power catch . Every non - national socialist German adult female who they kicked out of a position made way for a Nazi sympathiser who could help solidify their hold on public institutions .
Hamilton also was one of the rare faculty member who make do to contemplate different classes . Having pass her life studying the working course of study , she wrote about the Nazi insurance policy of sending exercise class women home — and correctly predicted that it would n’t make for because , ideals or not , the commonwealth involve the labor .
Alas , she did n’t have the clout nail to stop the Nazis . ( How coolheaded a narrative would this be if she did ? ) What she did have was connection and drive , and so for most of the 1930s , she provided what help she could to people fleeing Germany .
Hamilton proceed being a flash pain in the neck in the butt well into the 1960s . She argued that the paranoia about the Cold War was taking away American liberties . She fought against the propping up of anti - Communist regimes . She lobby for the Civil Rights Amendment . ( At first she ’d been against it , believing it would take away workplace protection for cleaning lady . ) She was on the FBI watch list into her nineties .
Hamilton pall in 1970 , years 101 , having spend her aliveness being supremely useful to humanity and make pretty much all the good enemies .
Images : ( top ) “ Radium girl ” working in a US manufactory . Public demesne . ( center and bottom ) Alice Hamilton , young and old . Public domain .
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