Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. A couple of summers ago,
Speaker 1: I had a little time to spend as I waited
Speaker 1: for a train out of Boston's North Station, and I
Speaker 1: decided that in that time I would go look for
Speaker 1: the Boston Molasses Flood historical marker, because it's not far
Speaker 1: from there. It was something to do. I'd never seen
Speaker 1: that marker before. While I was walking around, a different
Speaker 1: sign caught my eye, and it was about the Boston
Speaker 1: Floating Hospital. That was a children's hospital that operated on
Speaker 1: a boat in Boston Harbor in the late nineteenth and
Speaker 1: early twentieth centuries. I was immediately intrigued by that whole idea,
Speaker 1: and I thought about lining up the Floating Hospital for
Speaker 1: my next episode. But we've established by now that when
Speaker 1: times are particularly tough, sometimes I just want to talk
Speaker 1: about people trying to save some babies. So I saved
Speaker 1: the topic for later, and it is later now, so
Speaker 1: here we go. In the late nineteenth century, poverty was
Speaker 1: a serious problem in Boston, Massachusetts. The city had become
Speaker 1: known for its so called Brahmin class, which was wealthy, elite,
Speaker 1: and exclusive. But like a lot of other cities, it
Speaker 1: had been dramatically affected by industrialization, which had led to
Speaker 1: both a larger population and more pollution. Enormous numbers of
Speaker 1: people had also moved to Boston from Ireland in the
Speaker 1: wake of the Great Famine that started in eighteen forty five.
Speaker 1: By eighteen fifty, Irish immigrants made up about a quarter
Speaker 1: of Boston's population, and many of the newest arrivals had
Speaker 1: been fleeing a catastrophe and had arrived without a lot
Speaker 1: of money or resources. There also just wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of medical care available for poorer people in Boston, including children.
Speaker 1: Wealthy people could go to private hospitals, they could see
Speaker 1: private doctors, but there were not many charity hospitals for
Speaker 1: people who couldn't afford to do that. Definitely not enough
Speaker 1: charitable work to provide care for everyone who needed it.
Speaker 1: In terms of care, specifically for children. Boston Children's Hospital
Speaker 1: was founded in eighteen sixty nine, but it was pretty
Speaker 1: small at first. It only treated thirty patients. In its
Speaker 1: first year in operation, it only had twenty beds. The
Speaker 1: idea of medical care for children as its own specialty
Speaker 1: was also very new. The first children's hospital in the
Speaker 1: US had been established in Philadelphia in eighteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: and the term pediatrics first appeared in writing two years
Speaker 1: after that. Most of the vaccines that prevent deadly childhood
Speaker 1: diseases today had not been developed yet, and the first
Speaker 1: antibiotics were still decades away. So all this together meant
Speaker 1: that in the late nineteenth century, childhood mortality rates in
Speaker 1: Boston were very high. About ten percent of the children
Speaker 1: in the city died before they turned five, and those
Speaker 1: deaths disproportionately took place during the summertime. According to reports
Speaker 1: from the city's Board of Health, nearly three times as
Speaker 1: many children under the age of five died in the
Speaker 1: months of July and August than in the month of June.
Speaker 1: A lot of these summertime deaths were attributed to cholera
Speaker 1: and phantom, which was a catch all term for diarrheal
Speaker 1: illnesses in children. In adults, this was usually called cholera morbis.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of reasons why these illnesses were
Speaker 1: a lot more common and also deadlier in the summer.
Speaker 1: Today's home refrigeration techniques didn't exist yet, so at most
Speaker 1: people might have an ice box, but even that was
Speaker 1: often out of reach for the poorest families, so the
Speaker 1: bacteria that caused a lot of these illnesses could really
Speaker 1: thrive in unrefrigerated food in the warm weather. Modern air
Speaker 1: conditioning also didn't exist yet, so children who got one
Speaker 1: of these gastro intestinal illnesses were a lot more likely
Speaker 1: to become critically dehydrated during the summer when it was hot.
Speaker 1: This was all complicated by the fact that a lot
Speaker 1: of Boston's poorest people were living in overcrowded, badly ventilated tenements,
Speaker 1: often in parts of the city where the air quality
Speaker 1: was very bad due to industrial and railroad pollution. Another
Speaker 1: factor was connected to what babies in these neighborhoods were
Speaker 1: typically eating, which was often some sort of substitute for
Speaker 1: human breast milk. People in poor families typically had to
Speaker 1: return to work soon after giving birth just to make
Speaker 1: ends meet, and there were virtually no social or workplace
Speaker 1: supports in place for breastfeeding, with few exceptions. Poor women
Speaker 1: who worked as wet nurses were not allowed to bring
Speaker 1: their own children with them to work, so they were
Speaker 1: also fed some kind of substitute as well, while the
Speaker 1: employer's children were breastfed. Today, formula is made to meat
Speaker 1: baby's nutritional needs, and there are safeguards in place to
Speaker 1: try to ensure that formula is as safe as possible.
Speaker 1: None of those things were true in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: There were more than twenty brands of commercially made infant
Speaker 1: food in existence by the eighteen eighties, but they really
Speaker 1: weren't nutritionally complete, and even if they had been, they
Speaker 1: were not really being widely used yet. Instead, for most
Speaker 1: low income families, food for infants started with cow's milk
Speaker 1: or goat's milk, sometimes mixed with water, sugar, or other ingredients.
Speaker 1: Other alternatives included porridges and teas. These substitutes often were
Speaker 1: not nutritional adequate for babies. They typically had far too
Speaker 1: much of some nutrients and not enough of others, and
Speaker 1: since the milk was not being pasteurized, it could also
Speaker 1: contain pathogens that made people sick. Most people also didn't
Speaker 1: have a way to adequately clean and sterilize their baby bottles.
Speaker 1: The Reverend Rufus B. Toby was a minister who was
Speaker 1: aware of a lot of the issues that were affecting
Speaker 1: poor people in Boston. He was one of the associate
Speaker 1: pastors at Berkeley Temple Congregational Church, which was located near
Speaker 1: some of Boston's poorest neighborhoods. Berkeley Temple characterized itself as
Speaker 1: a congregation whose doors were always open and would always
Speaker 1: answer calls for spiritual or temporal help. The church had
Speaker 1: an array of groups and societies that carried out all
Speaker 1: kinds of charitable work, including lady workers who visited people
Speaker 1: in prisons and other institutions, as well as in their homes.
Speaker 1: Berkeley Temple also had a lending library and hosted classes
Speaker 1: for the community in academic subjects and in practical skills
Speaker 1: like dressmaking and mechanical drawing. One night in the summer
Speaker 1: of eighteen ninety three, Toby was returning home from work
Speaker 1: and crossed the South Boston Bridge, also known as the
Speaker 1: Dover Street Bridge. This bridge crossed four point Channel, which
Speaker 1: extended farther inland than it does today, and it offered
Speaker 1: a view of the Boston skyline. It had become a
Speaker 1: popular place for couples to go for a stroll, but
Speaker 1: that night Toby noticed that it was full of mothers
Speaker 1: walking back and forth with their babies and small children.
Speaker 1: Toby asked around and learned that this happened every night,
Speaker 1: sometimes late into the night, as parents tried to find
Speaker 1: some fresh air and relief from the heat thanks to
Speaker 1: the breeze that was coming off the harbor. Toby had
Speaker 1: also heard about a hospital boat in New York City
Speaker 1: called the Emma Abbot, which was named after an opera
Speaker 1: singer who was one of its major benefactors. The Emma
Speaker 1: Abbot had first launched in eighteen seventy five, but charitable
Speaker 1: organizations had started funding trips around New York's harbors and
Speaker 1: rivers in the late eighteen sixties to give poor children
Speaker 1: access to fresher, cooler air. This was especially in the
Speaker 1: warmer months. Toby started thinking about trying something similar in
Speaker 1: Boston to offer fresh air and free medical care to
Speaker 1: children in need, regardless of nationality or creed away from
Speaker 1: the pollution and noise of the city. In the words
Speaker 1: of a report issued by Boston's Floating Hospital in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three, quote physicians of the city who were consulted
Speaker 1: were in complete agreement as to the wonderful effects of
Speaker 1: sea air upon infants and young children, and especially when
Speaker 1: from any cause these babies were ailing or threatened by
Speaker 1: summer diseases. It was found to be a common practice
Speaker 1: with many physicians to send mothers with infants thus endangered
Speaker 1: upon daily johns in the marine park or some similar
Speaker 1: oap been bordering upon saltwater, or to any available place
Speaker 1: where these benefits could be obtained. We'll talk about how
Speaker 1: the floating Hospital actually got started after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Several people worked with the Reverend Rufus B. Toby on
Speaker 1: establishing a hospital ship for children in Boston. One was
Speaker 1: his assistant, Lewis Freeman. Freeman's father had been part of
Speaker 1: a diplomatic delegation from Central America and his mother was
Speaker 1: a black musical performer living in Washington, d c. Prior
Speaker 1: to the Civil War. We don't have a ton of
Speaker 1: detail about his life, but Freeman had visited Boston as
Speaker 1: a child and had really fallen in love with it,
Speaker 1: and when he moved back to Boston as an adult,
Speaker 1: he got a job at Berkeley Temple. Freeman played a
Speaker 1: critical role in managing the finances and operations of the
Speaker 1: Floating Hospital for its entire shipboard existence. He might have
Speaker 1: been the person who wrote the hospital's annual reports. Another
Speaker 1: was Edward Everett Hale, who was an author, a historian,
Speaker 1: and a Unitarian minister. Toby and Hale had both worked
Speaker 1: with the Seashore Homes Association, which was a charitable organization
Speaker 1: providing short seaside vacations to impoverished families in the summer.
Speaker 1: Hale was a key part of the fundraising effort for
Speaker 1: the hospital ship. Some of this was direct fundraising on
Speaker 1: his part and some was through organizations that he had inspired.
Speaker 1: His eighteen seventy novel Ten Times One Is Ten The
Speaker 1: Possible Reformation was about the power of collective action, and
Speaker 1: it made frequent use of the phrase lend a hand.
Speaker 1: Various social and charitable organizations had formed after its publication,
Speaker 1: calling themselves the Ten Times One Society or the Lend
Speaker 1: a Hand Club. Another prominent charity called the Monday Evening
Speaker 1: Club had also offered its support, and there were lots
Speaker 1: of individual donors, large and small. Eventually they raised enough
Speaker 1: money to charter a barge called the Clifford, which took
Speaker 1: its first voyage as a floating hospital on July twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four. A tugboat towed the Clifford out into
Speaker 1: the harbor at nine in the morning, and it remained
Speaker 1: at anchor until the afternoon when the tugboat brought it
Speaker 1: back to the dock. This first voyage was really an
Speaker 1: experiment and an attempt to demonstrate that there was a
Speaker 1: need for such a service in Boston. The Clifford was
Speaker 1: a recreational barge, so it had to be turned into
Speaker 1: a temporary hospital and then back again when it returned
Speaker 1: to the dock. In the words of a historical sketch
Speaker 1: of the floating Hospital published in nineteen oh three, quote,
Speaker 1: before it could be made available for hospital uses, every
Speaker 1: belonging of an excursion boat must be removed and the
Speaker 1: barge prepared for the reception of hospital furniture. Thus, in
Speaker 1: the morning, hammocks were swung, cots were placed in position,
Speaker 1: and clothing for the children, and apparatus for cooking food
Speaker 1: and sterilizing milk were taken aboard, all of which appliances
Speaker 1: had to be removed on the evening of the same day.
Speaker 1: On that first trip, the floating hospital had two doctors,
Speaker 1: two nurses and an assistant who all volunteered their time.
Speaker 1: Big focus was on the healthful benefits of sea air,
Speaker 1: so not a ton of medical staff. At that point,
Speaker 1: tickets had been distributed through charities, dispensaries, hospitals, and doctors.
Speaker 1: They had to be signed by a doctor indicating that
Speaker 1: a baby was sick and would benefit from the sea air,
Speaker 1: but did not have a contagious illness. Although some fathers
Speaker 1: did bring their children aboard, overwhelmingly babies and small children
Speaker 1: were brought by their mothers, older sisters, or other female relatives.
Speaker 1: Parents were also allowed to bring one healthy child under
Speaker 1: the age of six if they could not be left
Speaker 1: with someone else. All food on board was provided and
Speaker 1: paid for by charitable contributions that included bottles for babies
Speaker 1: who were not being breastfed and meals for older children
Speaker 1: and caregivers. Because contaminated food and milk were such common
Speaker 1: sources of summertime illness, no other food was allowed, and
Speaker 1: people's bags were searched and any food discarded before they
Speaker 1: could board. This rule about food was one of three
Speaker 1: rules printed on the back of the ticket, the other
Speaker 1: two being about bringing one healthy child if necessary, and
Speaker 1: that the trip would be postponed in the event of
Speaker 1: stormy weather. The staff used these bag searches as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to teach about food safety, trying as much as
Speaker 1: possible to avoid making mothers feel embarrassed or ashamed if
Speaker 1: they had food that had to be thrown away. There
Speaker 1: was a key difference between the approach to care at
Speaker 1: the Floating Hospital and most other medical services for children
Speaker 1: in Boston at the time. Time we already said those
Speaker 1: services were limited, but beyond that, parents were often intentionally excluded.
Speaker 1: There was just a running belief that poor mothers were
Speaker 1: part of the problem and were to blame for their
Speaker 1: children's illnesses. But the Floating Hospital welcomed parents aboard. In
Speaker 1: the word of a report written ahead of the eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety five season, quote one of the chief objects aimed
Speaker 1: at in the Floating Hospital service is to place the
Speaker 1: responsibility for the care of the sick baby upon the mother.
Speaker 1: While on board the Floating Hospital, a doctor and a
Speaker 1: nurse look out for its welfare. She is taught what
Speaker 1: to do for the child between trips and reports each
Speaker 1: time she returns with it. The experience thus acquired is invaluable.
Speaker 1: So this included things like teaching mothers to prepare formula
Speaker 1: that was as safe and nutritious as possible, or to
Speaker 1: prepare some version of milk in the earlier years it
Speaker 1: was as safe a new Chris as possible, how to
Speaker 1: clean and sterilize the baby bottles, and eventually offering affordable
Speaker 1: bottles and sterilizers for sale. In the first eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: four season, the Clifford took five hospital voyages. Roughly eleven
Speaker 1: hundred babies and children received care on the barge, accompanied
Speaker 1: by about six hundred and fifty mothers and other caregivers.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety five, Toby and Freeman left Berkeley Temple
Speaker 1: to focus solely on the Floating Hospital, establishing the Boston
Speaker 1: Floating Hospital Corporation. Money was raised for more voyages and
Speaker 1: a surgical ward was created, though surgery was not the
Speaker 1: main focus of the hospital. The majority of children treated
Speaker 1: at the Floating Hospital had some kind of gastro intestinal illness,
Speaker 1: but children with other diseases were treated as well, including
Speaker 1: those with bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infections, and various other diseases
Speaker 1: and conditions. In eighteen ninety five, the cliff took thirteen
Speaker 1: trips into the Harbor as a hospital, following the same
Speaker 1: basic pattern as the year before. Exactly where they went
Speaker 1: over the years usually depended on the weather. Lewis Freeman
Speaker 1: described it this way in a diary quote. We'd go
Speaker 1: out whenever there was a breeze. We'd leave the North
Speaker 1: End Pier at nine in the morning, go out into
Speaker 1: the upper Harbor, then into the Lower Harbor and down
Speaker 1: to Long Island opposite Deer Island. If the breeze got
Speaker 1: too heavy, we'd turn around and come back into Dorchester
Speaker 1: Bay and anchor down off of Thompson's Island. On Sunday
Speaker 1: we'd go through Gull Hut and anchor off of Pemberton. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: if the air was just right, we'd travel up to
Speaker 1: Marblehead or go down to anchor off of Situate Light.
Speaker 1: But our favorite spot to anchor and have lunch was
Speaker 1: just off Boston Light. The lighthouse keeper would sound the
Speaker 1: foghorn in our honor and the children would wave back.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety six, the floating hospital operated daily over
Speaker 1: the summer months except for Sundays. It was reorganized to
Speaker 1: have a board of managers and some paid staff. The
Speaker 1: scope of services that were offered aboard the floating hospital
Speaker 1: really grew. A kindergarten was established for the healthy children
Speaker 1: on board. A modified milk department was also created to
Speaker 1: prepare and bottle food for the babies. Over the years
Speaker 1: that followed, this crew into a food lab that was
Speaker 1: devoted to studying the nutritional content of milk substitutes and
Speaker 1: the nutritional needs of babies. That year, more than thirty
Speaker 1: five hundred people, including parents, benefited from some kind of
Speaker 1: care aboard the ship, and there were only three deaths.
Speaker 1: All of that growth made it obvious that chartering a
Speaker 1: barge was no longer practical and the Floating Hospital should
Speaker 1: just purchase the Clifford. The Floating Hospital was already a
Speaker 1: popular charity, in part because of feel good coverage in
Speaker 1: Boston area newspapers, and fundraising to buy the barge led
Speaker 1: to the establishment of named days, with larger donors having
Speaker 1: a day of sailing named after them. Later on, the
Speaker 1: hospital would do something similar with named beds. The hospital
Speaker 1: purchased the barge in eighteen ninety seven and re outfitted
Speaker 1: it to be permanently a hospital ship and to accommodate
Speaker 1: about two hundred patients at a time. Owning the barge
Speaker 1: created some new opportunities for the hospital. Previously, children who
Speaker 1: needed additional care at the hospital could be issued a
Speaker 1: ticket for a subsequent sailing before disembarking, but especially in
Speaker 1: the first couple of years, that next sailing might not
Speaker 1: be on the following day. Owning the barge meant that
Speaker 1: the hospital could establish an inpatient department for twenty four
Speaker 1: hour care of very sick children. The inpatient ward was
Speaker 1: described this way quote for here are between fifty and
Speaker 1: sixty of the sickest babies in Boston and Vicinity. Some
Speaker 1: of them have been selected from the sickest ones, brought
Speaker 1: to the upper deck, and the parents persuaded to give
Speaker 1: them their only chance of life, which lies in careful,
Speaker 1: persistent watching and nursing. By far the larger part, however,
Speaker 1: are sent by the physicians of the city, who have
Speaker 1: come to realize that here is a last resort well
Speaker 1: worth trying. But this created a new need. Temperatures typically
Speaker 1: dropped overnight, but in the process it also became a
Speaker 1: lot more humid around the harbor. The ship was very
Speaker 1: well ventilated. It was intentionally set up to get fresh
Speaker 1: air into the wards, but that hot stickiness could make
Speaker 1: conditions on board really miserable, and patients often got worse
Speaker 1: overnight because of it. In some cases, critically ill children died,
Speaker 1: and their cause of death was ultimately traced back to
Speaker 1: the heat or the humidity. This was particularly true during
Speaker 1: an exceptionally hot summer in eighteen ninety eight. So they
Speaker 1: got air conditioning. In the words of a nineteen oh
Speaker 1: three historical sketch of the hospital quote, next to the
Speaker 1: purchase of the barge, the most important event in the
Speaker 1: history of the floating hospital was the installation of what
Speaker 1: is now known as the atmospheric plant, which, to quote
Speaker 1: one of our physicians, brings October weather into dog days.
Speaker 1: Since the adoption of the permanent patient department, the good
Speaker 1: results accruing to this class of patients in the daytime
Speaker 1: on the open water were largely neutralized by the humidity
Speaker 1: of the August nights. This system was modified from ones
Speaker 1: that were being used in chocolate factories, and its use
Speaker 1: at the Floating Hospital created one of the earliest air
Speaker 1: conditioned hospital wards in the United States, if not the earliest.
Speaker 1: Here is how the atmospheric plant worked, drawn from that
Speaker 1: same nineteen oh three ride up quote. The air furnished
Speaker 1: the wards as drawn by the suction of a fan
Speaker 1: down a duct from above the upper deck into a
Speaker 1: receiver in the hold In this receiver is placed two
Speaker 1: series of coils, one series being connected with the brine
Speaker 1: tank and through which circulates a brine at a temperature
Speaker 1: of about ten degrees fahrenheit, and the other series being
Speaker 1: joined to an exhaust steam pipe, enabling steam to be
Speaker 1: used for heating when necessary. The air when entering the
Speaker 1: receiver passes over the brine coils, and a large percent
Speaker 1: of its moisture is condensed on the coils. This action
Speaker 1: is analogous to that observed in the winter of the
Speaker 1: moisture of the air of a warm steam room condensing
Speaker 1: on a window pane cooled by the outside air. Then
Speaker 1: the air passes over the steam coils, is heated to
Speaker 1: any desirable temperature and thus forced by the fan through
Speaker 1: the ducts into the wards. The quantity of air circulated
Speaker 1: is about two thousand cubic feet per minute, which gives
Speaker 1: an average of more than fifty cubic feet per person
Speaker 1: per minute, an amount satisfactory to the most critical and
Speaker 1: which is obtained by very few ventilating systems. That ten
Speaker 1: degree brine was made with ammonia, and this system allowed
Speaker 1: the air in the wards to remain at about seventy
Speaker 1: four degrees fahrenheit or about twenty three celsius and about
Speaker 1: fifty percent relative humidity regardless of the weather outside. The
Speaker 1: atmospheric plant was installed in eighteen ninety nine, and that
Speaker 1: same year a postgraduate nursing program was established at the
Speaker 1: Floating Hospital. It incorporated eleven or twelve lectures over the
Speaker 1: course of the season and hands on work with the
Speaker 1: children who were being cared for on the ship. This
Speaker 1: transitioned a lot of the nursing care on board from
Speaker 1: volunteers to trained nurses who were continuing their education. By
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, one hundred and thirteen nurses had earned
Speaker 1: postgraduate certificates from this program. In nineteen oh one, the
Speaker 1: Floating Hospital added a pathology lab, and it also started
Speaker 1: raising funds to build a new, purpose built ship. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just that the hospital's scope had grown so far.
Speaker 1: Beyond the benefits of fresh air and basic medical care
Speaker 1: for sick children, demand had grown as well, and by
Speaker 1: nineteen oh two staff were having to turn sick children
Speaker 1: away because there were just no more available beds. In
Speaker 1: nineteen oh five, twenty five children had to be turned
Speaker 1: away on a single day. The new ship set sail
Speaker 1: the following year, and we will talk about it after
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. The Boston Floating Hospital's new ship was
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy one feet or about fifty two
Speaker 1: meters long. It had a steel hull and a wooden superstructure,
Speaker 1: and it was built to be able to have its
Speaker 1: own steam engine, unlike the Clifford that had to be
Speaker 1: towed by a barge. The ship's new engine was installed
Speaker 1: before its second season in service, so if that first
Speaker 1: season still being towed around that atmospheric plant from the
Speaker 1: Clifford was also modified and installed on the new boat.
Speaker 1: The Boston Floating Hospital started its nineteen oh six season
Speaker 1: aboard the Clifford because the purpose built ship wasn't ready yet.
Speaker 1: A steel strike had caused some delays in its construction.
Speaker 1: The hospital moved to its new ship on August fourteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six. The new ship was staffed by a
Speaker 1: resident physician, several medical assistants, and between forty and fifty
Speaker 1: graduate nurses, and then there were also visiting physicians who
Speaker 1: were part of the patient's care. That had four decks,
Speaker 1: all of them with hot and cold running water. There
Speaker 1: was an operating room, a food lab, a clinical lab,
Speaker 1: a pharmacy, a kitchen, and a cafeteria to serve meals
Speaker 1: to the parents and healthy children. The ship had state
Speaker 1: rooms for staff who were there overnight, and it still
Speaker 1: had the kindergarten that had been set up for the
Speaker 1: healthy children on the Clifford. The hold contained a laundry
Speaker 1: and equipment for sterilizing linens, as well as a mortuary
Speaker 1: and an autol room. A nineteen oh six write up
Speaker 1: about the new ship described it this way quote, there
Speaker 1: are about sixty cribs grouped in four wards. Ward D
Speaker 1: has windows on two sides which allow of nearly complete
Speaker 1: opening of the walls to fresh air. Ward C has
Speaker 1: no walls, only curtains, and is used chiefly for tuberculosis cases.
Speaker 1: Wards A and B are more completely protected and are
Speaker 1: supplied with an abundance of air at just the right
Speaker 1: temperature and humidity by our atmospheric plant. No contagious cases
Speaker 1: are taken in case one develops while the boat is
Speaker 1: away from the wharf or is smuggled in. It is
Speaker 1: as completely isolated as possible. Side note, I am a
Speaker 1: little unclear on exactly how people were thinking of contagious
Speaker 1: while the floating hospital was operating. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: going back to its inception, the tickets had always clearly
Speaker 1: stated that children with cantagious disease were not admitted, but
Speaker 1: like what Holly just read referenced tuberculous cases, tuberculosis had
Speaker 1: been defined as a contagious illness by like the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: Robert Coke had presented findings isolating the tuberculosis bacillis in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two, so people knew that tuberculosis was contagious.
Speaker 1: A lot of the diseases that were grouped together as
Speaker 1: cholera and phantom were also spread through contaminated food or water,
Speaker 1: or from person to person through inadequate hygiene, so that
Speaker 1: is also contagious. The focus on keeping contagious illnesses out
Speaker 1: of the floating hospital might have just been more focused
Speaker 1: on the diseases that were known to cause sudden, serious
Speaker 1: outbreaks among children, so things like diphtheria and measles. At
Speaker 1: the same time, preventing disease spread on board the ship
Speaker 1: had always been a priority, going back to its very
Speaker 1: first voyages. Aboard the Clifford, the staff treated all cases
Speaker 1: of diarrheal illness as though they were contagious. Medical and
Speaker 1: nursing staff practiced thorough hand washing and infection control procedures.
Speaker 1: Linens were steam sanitized, and the wards were regularly disinfected.
Speaker 1: The purpose built ship was constructed so that words could
Speaker 1: be opened to the fresh air while also being isolated
Speaker 1: from one another, so that one could be disinfected or
Speaker 1: fumigated without affecting care that was going on in the others.
Speaker 1: Milk was also tested for bacterial contamination in the food lab,
Speaker 1: and the opening of the pathology lab allowed doctors to
Speaker 1: confirm diagnoses of various infectious diseases, as well as to
Speaker 1: look for the specific causes of cholera and phantom. Another
Speaker 1: priority was fire safety. There were daily fire drills on board,
Speaker 1: including practicing lowering the lifeboats and nurses practice passing bundles
Speaker 1: of cloth back and forth in the place of the babies.
Speaker 1: They would need to be a vacating if a fire happens.
Speaker 1: By this point, the floating hospital wasn't exactly framing itself
Speaker 1: as a research hospital. Its primary focus had always been
Speaker 1: the care of children and the education of their parents
Speaker 1: and caregivers on how to treat and prevent the illnesses
Speaker 1: they were susceptible to. In the summer, but it was
Speaker 1: unique in that it was devoted solely to children's care
Speaker 1: in the summer, which meant the doctors and nurses who
Speaker 1: worked there and other researchers who visited could learn more
Speaker 1: about these diseases over time. This included doctor Simon Flexner
Speaker 1: of the University of Pennsylvania, who visited for bacterial research.
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh three. Flexner had identified the bacterium known
Speaker 1: as Shigella flexneri, which is one of the causes of
Speaker 1: diarrheal illness. In nineteen hundred, one of the ongoing issues
Speaker 1: that the hospital had been feeding the patients. As we
Speaker 1: said earlier, the hospital was a popular charity, and that
Speaker 1: included grocery stores and other businesses donating food for the
Speaker 1: adults and the older children. Cow's milk was also donated
Speaker 1: by hp Hood Dairy, which was following very strict cleanliness
Speaker 1: and hygiene standards for the hospital's milk, so much so
Speaker 1: that the hospital tested it for bacterial contamination but didn't
Speaker 1: pasteurize it. Children were also being sent home from the
Speaker 1: hospital with enough milk for twenty four hours when they
Speaker 1: were discharged. The food lab had an apparatus for processing
Speaker 1: modifying and bottling human milk now went back to before
Speaker 1: the purpose built ship that made cow's milk more suitable
Speaker 1: for human babies, but having enough milk and being confident
Speaker 1: about its nutritional value for the babies was still a problem.
Speaker 1: Francis Parkman Denny, who ran the milk lab, was also
Speaker 1: an advocate of babies being fed human breast milk. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he thought there were ferments in the milk that activated
Speaker 1: ferments in the baby's blood, and that these ferments had
Speaker 1: a bactericidal effect and improved the baby's digestion. One of
Speaker 1: the ways he tried to improve access to breast milk
Speaker 1: at the Floating Hospital was by working with the Boston
Speaker 1: Wetnurse Directory, which was established by Fritz Bradley Talbot in
Speaker 1: nineteen ten. Talbot and Denny were both visiting physicians at
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, which went by MIA, which was
Speaker 1: a home for orphaned and abandoned children. Talbot saw this
Speaker 1: directory as a way to help the babies at the
Speaker 1: asylum and to help the wet nurses. The wet nursers
Speaker 1: were often very young and unmarried and really didn't have
Speaker 1: another way to support themselves in their children Unlike most
Speaker 1: other wet nurse jobs, nurses who were hired through Talbot's
Speaker 1: directory were allowed to keep their own children with them,
Speaker 1: and they fed those children themselves along with the children
Speaker 1: they were being paid to feed. Nurses from the directory
Speaker 1: were paid eight dollars a week, plus their room and board.
Speaker 1: There was also a breast milk collection program at the
Speaker 1: Floating Hospital, which Denny started in nineteen oh nine. The
Speaker 1: hospital paid sixty cents per court of collected breast milk.
Speaker 1: Participants in this program were given physical exams and screened
Speaker 1: for tuberculosis and syphilis. The hospital provided them with breast
Speaker 1: pumps and trained them on how to use and sanitize them,
Speaker 1: and to store the pumped milk on ice. Participants in
Speaker 1: this program were often a little more affluent than the
Speaker 1: wet nurses. They didn't need lodging in addition to their pay.
Speaker 1: Sometimes these were women whose children had died or who
Speaker 1: just wanted to give something back to the hospital after
Speaker 1: their children had received medical treatment there. By the nineteen teens,
Speaker 1: researchers at the Floating Hospital's food lab were also really
Speaker 1: making advances and developing shelf stable powders that would mimic
Speaker 1: human breast milk as closely as possible. The hospital already
Speaker 1: had a quick meant that could dehydrate milk products to
Speaker 1: be reconstituted later, but this also involved research into the
Speaker 1: chemical composition of milk from both cows and humans. This
Speaker 1: research was overseen by doctor Alfred Bosworth, who was director
Speaker 1: of research at the hospital. Louise Giblin, who was one
Speaker 1: of the few women chemists in the United States at
Speaker 1: this point, was a critical part of the day to
Speaker 1: day work on this Eventually their work led to the
Speaker 1: development of the infant formula Similac, although that was after
Speaker 1: Bosworth had moved on from the Floating Hospital. He went
Speaker 1: to work for Kellogg's for a while before he started
Speaker 1: his own company. By the nineteen twenties, rates of childhood
Speaker 1: death from summer illnesses in Boston had dropped significantly. Massachusetts
Speaker 1: started requiring milk to be pasteurized in nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: which dramatically reduced the spread of milk borne illnesses. The
Speaker 1: city had also improved its sewage system, which removed another
Speaker 1: source of spread for diarrheal illnesses. The Floating Hospital and
Speaker 1: other healthcare systems in the city had improved public health
Speaker 1: and medical care for children. The death rate from summertime
Speaker 1: diarrheal illnesses had been thirty to forty percent in Boston
Speaker 1: at the end of the nineteenth century, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six it had dropped to a little more than
Speaker 1: twelve percent. On July one, nineteen twenty seven, the Boston
Speaker 1: Floating Hospital caught fire and it burned down to the hull.
Speaker 1: The cause of the fire is not known, but it
Speaker 1: may have spread to the ship from the dock. The
Speaker 1: hospital season hadn't started yet, so there were no patients
Speaker 1: or hospital staff on board, and the crew members who
Speaker 1: were there safely evacuated. Initially, there were plans to rebuild
Speaker 1: the ship, but the hospital had really outgrown in Instead,
Speaker 1: the ship was rebuilt as a tanker and operated as
Speaker 1: the Marshall B Hall until it left service and was
Speaker 1: scrapped in nineteen fifty two. The insurance payout from the
Speaker 1: fire was used to help build a new pediatric hospital,
Speaker 1: this time though on land. The original facility, still called
Speaker 1: the Floating Hospital, was on Ash Street. It opened in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one. Care at that hospital continued to be
Speaker 1: free until nineteen thirty eight. The Boston Floating Hospital went
Speaker 1: through a series of relocations and changes and mergers over
Speaker 1: the years that followed. It joined the New England Medical
Speaker 1: Center Consortium. In nineteen thirty, it partnered with Tough School
Speaker 1: of Medicine and the Boston Dispensary, and it later merged
Speaker 1: with those institutions. It continued to be known as the
Speaker 1: Floating Hospital until twenty twenty, when it was renamed Tuff's
Speaker 1: Medical Center. In January of twenty twenty two, Tuffts announced
Speaker 1: that it was closing the forty one bed inpatient pediatric
Speaker 1: unit at the hospital and converting that to ICU space
Speaker 1: for adults. I cannot speak to the legitimacy of Huff's
Speaker 1: financial and personnel decisions, but people in Boston were furious.
Speaker 1: Although New York's Floating Hospital, which had served as an
Speaker 1: inspiration for the Boston Floating Hospital, no longer operates on
Speaker 1: the water today, it does still exist as a nonprofit
Speaker 1: organization focused on medically underserved communities there. And that's your
Speaker 1: episode about saving some babies, saving a lot of babies.
Speaker 1: Do you have listener mail? Yeah, so this is from
Speaker 1: jesse Ann, and jesse Anne wrote and said, Hi, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy, I just finished listening to the episodes this
Speaker 1: week about the Vietnam draft board raids. Hearing the names
Speaker 1: Philip and Daniel Berrigan took me back to college real quick.
Speaker 1: My bachelor's is in Religious studies, a history of religion
Speaker 1: degree and not a theology degree, and one semester I
Speaker 1: took a class called Global Justice. Part of this class
Speaker 1: involved learning about religious movements geared towards social justice and
Speaker 1: the approaches to justice very thinkers took. Being one of
Speaker 1: those nerdy kids. I still have my notebooks from college
Speaker 1: and most of the papers I wrote. One of the
Speaker 1: papers I wrote in that class was on Philip Berrigan's autobiography,
Speaker 1: Fighting the Lamb's War. The part about the brothers that
Speaker 1: has always stuck out to me wasn't what he did
Speaker 1: with the draft cards steering the Vietnam War, but that
Speaker 1: after the war he and others broke into a warhead
Speaker 1: storage area and hammered on the warheads. This was some
Speaker 1: of what Philip wrote about in the book. Their Plowshares actions,
Speaker 1: which began with the first break into a warhead storage
Speaker 1: facility in nineteen eighty, got their name from Isaiah Chapter two,
Speaker 1: verse four. They shall beat swords into plowshares and their
Speaker 1: spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword
Speaker 1: against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore. Aside from
Speaker 1: the book, another place you and others can see more
Speaker 1: of their impact is by going to Jonahhouse dot Org,
Speaker 1: which was a community Philip and his wife were a
Speaker 1: part of. Good who made the comment during the episode
Speaker 1: that the brothers are interesting, but I agree so much
Speaker 1: with that. Growing up Catholic, I wish I had been
Speaker 1: taught about the social activism they and other Catholics had
Speaker 1: throughout history. I've attached pictures of the cats my brother
Speaker 1: and I had growing up. The black cat was my
Speaker 1: brother's and his name was Leather. He was a hunter
Speaker 1: and enjoyed leaving presents at the back door for us.
Speaker 1: The textedo cat was mine and her name was Hearts.
Speaker 1: In the picture of my brother holding her, you can
Speaker 1: see the black patch in her paw shaped like a heart.
Speaker 1: She liked to bring lizards and crickets inside to terrorize
Speaker 1: us until we caught them and took them away from her.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for bringing up some people in history
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about in years. Jesse and Jesse, and
Speaker 1: thank you for these kitty cat pictures Kitty. Our kitty
Speaker 1: cats are exclusively indoor kitty cats, but on the occasion
Speaker 1: that a rodent or insect or etc. Gets into the house,
Speaker 1: they immediately go after it. We have adorable pictures of
Speaker 1: cats lounging in the most lounging ways. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Jesse, and for your email. If you would
Speaker 1: like to send us a note about this or any
Speaker 1: other podcasts or history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. You
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and
Speaker 1: anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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