Abstract
Born into an affluent family on February 27, 1869, in Manhattan, New York, but raised from six weeks of age onward in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Alice Hamilton received her medical training at the University of Michigan Medical School (Figure 1). 1
Dr Hamilton had become a member and resident of Hull House in Chicago, the settlement house of social reformers Jane Addams and Ellen Starr. 1 Such settlement houses were designed to bring social reformers into the communities of urban poverty. Although Dr Hamilton did leave Hull House in 1919 to become the first woman faculty member of Harvard University, she often returned. It was at Hull House where she regularly experienced meeting factory workers facing unsafe and unhealthy working conditions and environments. 2
Through her medical training and shoe-leather epidemiological approach of in-person investigations to industrial worksites, Dr Hamilton recognized a need for occupational medicine in the United States. 3 Her formal investigations began when appointed in 1910 by the Illinois Governor to survey industrial disease in the state. Dr Hamilton focused on trades known to be dangerous and occupational poisons, for example, lead. The survey report resulted in Illinois legislators passing occupational laws in 1911 to safeguard workers from harmful chemical exposures.
Alice Hamilton's statue in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sculpted by Tony Frudakis and unveiled in the year 2000.
At the time of her death in 1970, the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act was passed by the U.S. Congress shortly after. 4 The OSH Act has contributed to safer workplaces, for example, less worker deaths, from on average of 38 per day in 1970 to 13 per day in 2020. 5 Dr Hamilton's contributions to occupational medicine helped build the national groundwork for the creation of the OSH Administration.
Workers throughout dangerous trades today face far safer working conditions and environments from chemical exposures due to advancements in occupational medicine by Dr Alice Hamilton.
