In Chicago , in 1902 , an outbreak of typhoid was vote out people and no one knew why . One courageous scientist wade into the middle of the epidemic and estimate it out . Or so she thought . Years later on , she discovered her campaign had enabled a cover - up of the real problem .
The scientist was Alice Hamilton , a superb bacteriologist endure and work in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth Century . Hamilton was spot by her peers not only as a gifted scientist ( she would later become the first adult female appointed to the faculty at Harvard Medical School ) , but an forthright counselor-at-law for human rights . When an epidemic of typhoid break out in a inadequate neighborhood near where she lived , she was a natural pick to identify the beginning of the irruption .
When Hamilton toured the neighborhood , she found illegal outhouse behind the tenement houses . The privies were built and maintained by tenant , who could n’t make do with the lilliputian , over - adulterate , and badly keep up bathroom in their own buildings . The makeshift latrine were ride with flies . But so , too , were the tenants ’ kitchens . Unlike the rich , the poor had few screens on their windows , so Hamilton enter that it was n’t a foresightful slip , for a fly ball , from an earth-closet to a kitchen .
Hamilton ’s investigating is still hold up asan deterrent example of how public safety inquiry should be conducted . She take on flies from both the privies and kitchen , put them in stock , and cultured the stock . She discovered that flies from the outhouses were carrying typhoid bacteria . So were tent flap from the kitchens . Hamilton recommended that tenants cancel their kitchen clean , traverse their food , and wash their hands scrupulously . Public health story proclaimed“The Guilt Of The ‘ Typhoid rainfly ’ ” had been “ Scientifically found . ”The event trigger off an addition in public support for laws that require landlords to supply adequate bathrooms for their tenants , and keep them clean and in function order .
The problem was : The flies had not caused the enteric fever outbreak .
While the conditions of the tenement housing were sure condemnable , the trouble actually put beneath the housing . There , a sewer pipe had split up andleaked into a H2O tube . Hamilton was not cognisant of this when she did her experimentation . Had this come to light , it would have made the Board of Health look extremely bad , and so , when Hamilton established a data link between fly front and enteric fever , the metropolis prefer to point the finger at the landlord and tent-fly .
When she learned the true cause of the typhoid irruption , Hamilton , to her deferred payment , loudly proclaimed that her most far-famed experiment had furnish the incorrect ending . But for the rest of her sprightliness , she was often introduced as the person who had stopped the typhoid epidemic by stop the flies .
mental image : Thomas Bresson
scientific discipline
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