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

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

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

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

Thank You
• Julie Golia, Ph.D.
Public Historian
Co-Director, Students and Faculty in the Archives
jgolia@brooklynhistory.org
• Robin M. Katz
Outreach & Public Services Archivist
Co-Director, Students and Faculty in the Archives
rkatz@brooklynhistory.org

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

More Related Content

Viewers also liked

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

More from Robin M. Katz

Recently uploaded

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