Behind the Book: Photographs from Disease and Discovery

The following are extended captions from Elizabeth Fee’s Disease and Discovery: A History of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, 1916–1939. Fee’s book tells the story of the founding and early years of the nation’s first dedicated school of public health has been reissued to coincide with the school’s centennial celebration.

Recent European immigrants and black rural migrants lived in tenement housing in Baltimore’s alleys.  These tenements were dilapidated, dirty, and insanitary – and the immigrants themselves were blamed for these conditions. Because of their laziness and poor habits, they were said to be responsible for spreading diseases. Baltimore Mayor Howard Jackson cheerfully explained, “We have a high death rate here and there is an admirable field for efficient research work.” 

In 1926, the School of Hygiene and Public Health opened its new building on North Wolfe Street. Dr Andrew Balfour from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine gave a stirring opening address: “I believe that today you are opening and consecrating not a school but a temple, a shrine with infinite possibilities . . . .The pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of pleasure are but evanescent compared with the pursuit of hygiene as a world force.”

The School of Hygiene opened many new fields of research, including the study of the smallest of all disease-producing organisms, then called the “filterable viruses.” Charles E. Simon’s course on this subject was said to be the first of its kind in the world.  Simon was given two small rooms at the top of the building, beside the elevator shaft, for his research and that of his students.  Here, laboratory assistants are preparing teaching materials. Students were delighted with the course and the “historic opportunity” to conduct research on the tissue cultures that Simon had gathered from around the world. 

In order to train students in the practical aspects of public health, the school cooperated with the Baltimore City Health Department to establish the Eastern Health District, where students and public health nurses would be able to experience all the activities  of the best city health departments. The local population was to be used for epidemiological studies of communicable diseases, and for investigations of maternal and child health, school health, mental disorders, and industrial hygiene. Here, a public health nurse stands at the door of the Eastern Health District, ready to conduct a house-to-house health survey.

Many studies focused on the health of children, including investigations of measles and diphtheria, the assessment of nutritional status, and the provision of medical, dental, and hearing examinations, along with free smallpox vaccinations, prenatal care, and an unending stream of information and advice.  As the Baltimore Sun newspaper reported: “Every child in the district, and a good share of adults, comes sooner or later into the grasp of a health officer or nurse. No child can escape. Some of them are under the benevolent dictation before they are born.”  Here, a nurse weighs a healthy and happy baby in the well-baby clinic.

Elizabeth Fee is the chief historian at the National Library of Medicine. She is the coeditor of AIDS: The Making of a Chronic Disease, Making Medical History: The Life and Times of Henry E. Sigerist, Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine, and many other works. Her latest book is Disease and Discovery: A History of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, 1916–1939.