Featured in this exhibit are four pioneers of Public Health in Massachusetts: Lemuel Shattuck, Henry Ingersoll Bowdich, Henry Pickering Walcott, and George Hoyt Bigelow.

Each made major contributions to the development of public health as a Science.

Also included in this exhibit room are pictures pertaining to the role the city of Boston played in the development of Public Health in the United States.

   *  As early as the 1700's, Boston harbor served as a first line of

      defense against smallpox, with ships being quarantined in the

      harbor.

   *  The first board of health in the nation was established in Boston in

      1796, and its first president was Paul Revere.

   *  One of the first reports to link environmental and social factors to

       health was Lemuel Shattuck's Report of the Sanitary Commission

       of Massachusetts, presented to the state legislature on April 25,

       1850.  In this report, Shattuck called for the establishment of a

       state board of health, but Shattuck died in 1859 without much

       response to his report.

    *  Finally, in 1869, the first state board of health in the United States

       was established - in Massachusetts. The seal displayed in the

       exhibit was designed in 1969 to celebrate the Centennial of the

       Department of Public Health in Massachusetts.

Other pictures include Cotton Mather, who promoted inoculation against smallpox in 1721; and the first use of ether in a surgical operation at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846.