Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Stamp Vignette Medical Science

1997; Elsevier BV; Volume: 72; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0025-6196(11)63591-x

1942-5546

Alice Hamilton, Robert A. Kyle, Marc A. Shampo,

Medical History and Innovations

Alice Hamilton was born on Feb. 27,1869, in New York City; her family moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, when she was 6 weeks old. She received her early education at home, but at the age of 17 years, she left Indiana to attend Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, where she studied Latin, Greek, German, and philosophy but had no training in the natural sciences. She returned to Indiana and attended the medical school in Fort Wayne for 1 year. Subsequently, she was admitted to the University of Michigan Medical School (Ann Arbor), one of the few quality schools that accepted female students. Hamilton received her M.D. degree in 1893 and was an intern at the New England Hospital for Women and Children near Boston. She studied for a year in Germany, where she was admitted to the lectures but not to the laboratories at the University of Leipzig. She transferred to the University of Munich because the laboratories were open to her but found that the lectures were closed to women. For a short time, she attended the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Baltimore, Maryland), where she received instruction from the noted American pathologist Dr. Simon Flexner (1863–1946). In 1897, she obtained her first academic position, instructor of pathology at the Women's Medical School at Northwestern University in Chicago (Illinois). An admirer of social worker Jane Addams (1860–1935), Hamilton was accepted as a resident at Hull-House and provided medical services to the indigents of the Chicago slums. In 1910, Hamilton determined that wristdrop in industrial workers resulted from lead poisoning. She subsequently investigated many lead plants in Illinois and identified 304 cases of lead poisoning in 1 year. Later, she described phosphorus poisoning in the munitions industry, mercury poisoning among felt workers, carbon monoxide poisoning among steel workers, and silicosis in sandblasters. Hamilton was the first woman to be appointed an assistant professor on the faculty of Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Her appointment on Mar. 10, 1919, was vigorously protested by members of the Harvard Club of Boston. Although faculty members were allowed access to the club and squash courts, she agreed to relinquish both her right to use the Harvard Club and her quota of football tickets. In contrast to the discrimination of her colleagues, Hamilton was well respected by her students. A young physician who returned to Cornell Medical School after a 2-year fellowship at Harvard University was asked to name the three most brilliant thinkers he had met during his stay at Harvard. His response was neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing (1869–1939), physiologist Walter Cannon (1871–1945), and Alice Hamilton. In 1924, Hamilton was appointed to the Health Organization of the League of Nations. That same year, she was invited to Russia to conduct a personal survey of the country's activities in industrial hygiene. She was the first woman recipient of the Lasker Award, which she won in 1938. In 1949, she was labeled a “communist sympathizer” by the House Committee on Un-American Activities because of her 1924 visit to the Soviet Union. In 1963, at the age of 93 years, she signed an open letter protesting the continuation of US military intervention in Vietnam. She died on Sep. 22,1970, in Hadlyme, Connecticut (near New London), at the age of 101 years. She was honored on a stamp issued by the United States on Jul. 11, 1995.