APU Business Original

Alice Hamilton: A Pioneer in Improving US Workplace Health

By Deborah Barkin Fromer
Faculty Member, School of Health Sciences

Women’s History Month gives us the chance to highlight exceptional pioneers. One particularly noteworthy person to celebrate this month is Dr. Alice Hamilton.

Start a health sciences degree at American Public University.

Dr. Alice Hamilton (February 27, 1869–September 22, 1970) has been called the “Mother of Occupational Medicine.” She was one of the first people to correlate disease with specific occupations and was instrumental in warning people about the health risks and potential dangers of the industrial workplace. 

This dedicated and talented woman is little-known. However, the United States Postal Service honored Dr. Hamilton in 1995 by placing her picture on the 55-cent stamp.

What Is Occupational Medicine?

Occupational medicine is the medical field that focuses on three areas:

  • The health of workers, including the ability to perform work
  • The physical, chemical, biological and social environments of the workplace
  • The health outcomes of environmental exposures

Today, we count on government agencies like the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) to warn us about medical hazards in our workplaces. However, few people are aware that Dr. Alice Hamilton initiated several American national safety standards.

Alice Hamilton’s Early Life and Education

Alice Hamilton was born in New York City and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her family (she had six siblings) lived on a large estate, and she enjoyed a comfortable upbringing. Her only formal education before college was to attend two years at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, starting at age 17. 

Alice decided to become a doctor while still in her teens. In her autobiography, she states, “I chose medicine, not because I was scientifically-minded, for I was deeply ignorant of science. I chose it because as a doctor I could go anywhere I pleased — to far-off lands or to city slums — and be quite sure I could be of use anywhere.”    

She attended Bryn Mawr College and earned her medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1893, where she was one of only 14 women in a class of 47. After internships at Minneapolis’ Northwestern Hospital for Women and Children and Boston’s New England Hospital for Women and Children, Alice sailed for Germany to study bacteriology and pathology. 

At the time, German universities did not admit women. Eventually, Alice gained permission to attend classes in Munich and Leipzig, as long as she remained “invisible” to the male students.

In 1896, Dr. Hamilton returned to the United States and continued her studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She was offered a job teaching pathology at the Women’s Medical School of Northwestern University in Chicago and accepted it because it provided the opportunity to live at Hull House, the largest of the nation’s settlement communities. Throughout her life, Dr. Hamilton also remained deeply committed to her work at Hull House. 

In Dr. Hamilton’s 1943 autobiography, “Exploring the Dangerous Trades,” Hamilton noted what Hull House taught her: “Life in a settlement does several things to you. Among others, it teaches you that education and culture have little to do with real wisdom, the wisdom that comes from life experiences.”

Alice Hamilton and Her Accomplishments

Dr. Hamilton inspected and studied the hazards of pottery plants, printing plants, smelters, steel mills, and mines and munitions factories. She also explored “dead-finger syndrome” in laborers using jackhammers and the grave health risks of lead, carbon monoxide, phosphorus, benzene, picric acid, mercury, and many other toxic substances that were commonly used in the workplaces of her era.   

In addition, Dr. Hamilton took on investigations of typhoid fever, tuberculosis and cocaine abuse in Chicago. In 1908, she was appointed to the Illinois Commission of Occupational Diseases and to the U.S. Department of Labor in 1911. Her findings were so scientifically persuasive they caused wide-ranging reforms, both voluntary and regulatory, to improve the health of workers.

In 1905, Dr. Hamilton published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reporting on experiments measuring the number of bacteria from healthy doctors and nurses when they talked or coughed. Her work led her to recommend face masks during surgery.

During the 1918 global flu epidemic, medical personnel routinely adopted face masks to protect themselves and many cities required them in public. Since then, the use of face masks is a part of the protective equipment of healthcare professionals around the world, a practice that is still extremely relevant in the time of COVID-19.

In 1919, Dr. Hamilton was the first female faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Her appointment came with three limitations:

  • She was not allowed into the Faculty Club.
  • She was not to participate in academic processions at Commencement.
  • She was not eligible for faculty tickets to the football games.

Dr. Alice Hamilton combined medical expertise with humanitarianism. Her contributions to the field of occupational safety and health still remain with us today and have helped to ensure the workplace safety of many U.S. employees.

About the Author

Deborah Barkin Fromer received a B.S. in biology at the Sage Colleges in Albany, New York and was certified with the American Society of Clinical Pathologists as a medical technologist in 1976. She worked in the clinical laboratory as a medical technologist specializing in microbiology. In the 1990s, Ms. Fromer became interested in public health, returned to graduate school and completed a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas.

Ms. Fromer spent several years at the University of Kansas School of Medicine as a researcher in obstetrics and gynecology, and several years as a researcher and teaching associate in preventive medicine and public health. She has taught online epidemiology and public health courses since 2001.

From 2007-2015, Ms. Fromer was an epidemiologist at the Sedgwick County Health Department in Wichita, Kansas. Her work involved electronic surveillance of reportable disease and medical conditions, investigating outbreaks and illness, solving mysteries, and keeping people in the community educated and healthy.

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