Pioneers of Public Health in Massachusetts

Featured in this exhibit are four pioneers of Public Health in Massachusetts: Lemuel Shattuck, Henry Ingersoll Bowdich, Henry Pickering Wolcott, and George Hoyt Bigelow, each of whom made major contributions to the development of public health as a science.

Also included are pictures pertaining to the role of the city of Boston in the development of public health in America. 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. This report also 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 here 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.