Dr. Alice Hamilton: The Ancient who invented occupational health

When Alice Hamilton, M.D., looked back on her life at the age of 88, she said this: “For me the satisfaction is that things are better now, and I had some part in it.”

How right she was. The Indiana native and member of the Miss Porter’s School class of 1889 was a physician and a tireless campaigner for social justice. Dr. Hamilton was “the principal person to bestow scientific respectability on the field of industrial toxicology in America,” wrote Madeleine P. Grant, author of “Alice Hamilton: Pioneer Doctor in Industrial Medicine.”

In 1910, the governor of Illinois appointed her to the nation’s first panel to investigate workplace disease. Focusing on the lead industry, which had sickened men she knew from Hull House, the team inspected factories, interviewed workers, reviewed medical records, and educated owners and managers about the dangers of lead poisoning and ways to operate more safely. Soon after, the U.S. labor commissioner tasked her with a national survey into lead poisoning. Other studies of munitions plants during World War I, the incidence of tuberculosis in miners and stonecutters, mercury poisoning in felt hatmakers followed.

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In 1995, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 55-cent stamp in her honor, noting that her discoveries “led to worker’s compensation laws, safer working conditions, and the abolishment of child labor.” And Hamilton Hall, which houses the history and English departments at Porter’s, is named for her. Inspired by the reform and social justice movements of her time, Dr. Hamilton moved to Chicago in the late 1890s to help poor and immigrant workers. She lived in the famed Hull House settlement home, where she ran a wellbaby clinic and taught pathology at the Women’s Medical College of Northwestern University. She also treated immigrants with work-related health conditions and deepened her expertise in industrial toxicology.

In 1919, she became an assistant professor of industrial medicine at Harvard Medical School the University’s first female faculty member. She went on to write “the first, most complete, authoritative text on ‘Industrial Poisons in the United States,’ Ms. Grant wrote, and she was the foremost expert on lead poisoning in the country.”

Dr. Hamilton was one of several Hamilton women who attended Miss Porter’s School three aunts, three cousins and three sisters. Her sister Edith went on to become a renowned classicist, head of a private school in Baltimore and author of the wildly popular “The Greek Way.” Margaret became an educator and headmistress at Edith’s school, and sister Norah was an artist.

“The fact is, this school was built by women and their money,” she said. “Every gift that comes in, large and small, matters to me and matters to the generations yet to come. Almost every living graduate has benefited from philanthropy in one way or the other, because someone gave a building, or made a capital gift, or gave to the annual fund.”

Chief Advancement Officer Christine Pina said everyone associated with Miss Porter’s “should be proud of our dynamic legacy of women investing in women,” particularly because less than 2 percent of all total philanthropic giving in the United States is directed toward organizations supporting women and girls.

“I encourage everyone to consider how their values align with and are reflected in their charitable giving,” she said. “Wanting to invest in Miss Porter’s should be an essential part of being active in the Ancient network. Gifts of any size are meaningful and impactful.”

Want to learn more?

Visit: porters.org/giving-overview