Boston Floating Hospital

The Boston Floating Hospital was a children’s hospital that operated on a boat in Boston Harbor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:31Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 2:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. A couple of summers ago, I had a little time to spend as I waited for a train out of Boston's North Station, and I decided that in that time, I would go look for the Boston Molasses Flood Historical Marker, because it's not far from there. It was something to do. I'd never seen that marker before. While I was walking around, a different sign caught my eye, and it was about the Boston Floating Hospital. That was a children's hospital that operated on a boat in Boston Harbor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I was immediately intrigued

• 3:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  by that whole idea, and I thought about lining up the Floating Hospital for my next episode. But we've established by now that when times are particularly tough, sometimes I just want to talk about people trying to save some babies. So I saved the topic for later, and it is later now. So here we go. In the late 19th century, poverty was a serious problem in Boston, Massachusetts. The city had become known for its so-called Brahman class, which was wealthy, elite, and exclusive. But like a lot of other cities, it had been dramatically affected by industrialization, which had led to both a larger population and more pollution. Enormous

• 3:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  numbers of people had also moved to Boston from Ireland in the wake of the Great Famine that started in 1845. By 1850, Irish immigrants made up about a quarter of Boston's population, and many of the newest arrivals had been fleeing a catastrophe and had arrived without a lot of money or resources. There also just wasn't a lot of medical care available for poorer people in Boston, including children. Wealthy people could go to private hospitals. They could see private doctors, but there were not many charity hospitals for people who couldn't afford to do that. Definitely not enough charitable work to provide care for everyone who needed it.

• 4:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  In terms of care specifically for children, Boston Children's Hospital was founded in 1869, but it was pretty small at first. It only treated 30 patients in its first year in operation. It only had 20 beds. The idea of medical care for children as its own specialty was also very new. The first children's hospital in the US had been established in Philadelphia in 1855, and the term pediatrics first appeared in writing two years after that. Most of the vaccines that prevent deadly childhood diseases today had not been developed yet, and the first antibiotics were still decades away.

• 5:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  So all this together meant that in the late 19th century, childhood mortality rates in Boston were very high. About 10% of the children in the city died before they turned five, and those deaths disproportionately took place during the summertime. According to reports from the city's Board of Health, nearly three times as many children under the age of five died in the months of July and August than in the month of June. A lot of these summertime deaths were attributed to cholera infantum, which was a catch-all term for diarrheal illnesses in children. In adults, this was usually called cholera morbus. There were a couple of reasons why these illnesses were a lot more common and also

• 6:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  deadlier in the summer. Today's home refrigeration techniques didn't exist yet, so at most, people might have an icebox, but even that was often out of reach for the poorest families. So the bacteria that caused a lot of these illnesses could really thrive in unrefrigerated food in the warm weather. Modern air conditioning also didn't exist yet, so children who got one of these gastrointestinal illnesses were a lot more likely to become critically dehydrated during the summer when it was hot. This was all complicated by the fact that a lot of Boston's poorest people were living in overcrowded, badly ventilated tenements, often in parts of the city where

• 6:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  the air quality was very bad due to industrial and railroad pollution. Another factor was connected to what babies in these neighborhoods were typically eating, which was often some sort of substitute for human breast milk. People in poor families typically had to return to work soon after giving birth just to make ends meet, and there were virtually no social or workplace supports in place for breastfeeding. With few exceptions, poor women who worked as wet nurses were not allowed to bring their own children with them to work, so they were also fed some kind of substitute as well, while the employers' children were breastfed.

• 7:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Today, formula is made to meet babies' nutritional needs, and there are safeguards in place to try to ensure that formula is as safe as possible. Neither of those things were true in the late 19th century. There were more than 20 brands of commercially-made infant food in existence by the 1880s, but they really weren't nutritionally complete, and even if they had been, they were not really being widely used yet. Instead, for most low-income families, food for infants started with cow's milk or goat's milk, sometimes mixed with water, sugar, or other ingredients. Other alternatives

• 8:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  included porages and teas. These substitutes often were not nutritionally adequate for babies. They typically had far too much of some nutrients and not enough of others, and since the milk was not being pasteurized, it could also contain pathogens that made people sick. Most people also didn't have a way to adequately clean and sterilize their baby bottles.

• 8:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Reverend Rufus B. Toby was a minister who was aware of a lot of the issues that were affecting poor people in Boston. He was one of the associate pastors at Berkeley Temple Congregational Church, which was located near some of Boston's poorest neighborhoods. Berkeley Temple characterized itself as a congregation whose doors were always open and would always answer calls for spiritual or temporal help. The church had an array of groups and societies that carried out all kinds of charitable work, including lady workers who visited people in prisons and other institutions, as well as in their homes. Berkeley Temple also had a lending library and hosted classes for the community in academic

• 9:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  subjects and in practical skills like dressmaking and mechanical drawing. One night in the summer of 1893, Toby was returning home from work and crossed the South Boston Bridge, also known as the Dover Street Bridge. This bridge crossed Fort Point Channel, which extended farther inland than it does today, and it offered a view of the Boston skyline. It had become a popular place for couples to go for a stroll, but that night Toby noticed that it was full of mothers walking back and forth with their babies and small children. Toby asked around and learned that this happened every night, sometimes late into the night, as parents tried to find some fresh air and relief from the heat, thanks

• 10:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  to the breeze that was coming off the harbor. Toby had also heard about a hospital boat in New York City called the Emma Abbott, which was named after an opera singer who was one of its major benefactors. The Emma Abbott had first launched in 1875, but charitable organizations had started funding trips around New York's harbors and rivers in the late 1860s to give poor children access to fresher, cooler air. This was especially in the warmer months. Toby started thinking about trying something similar in Boston, to offer fresh air and free medical care to children in need, regardless of nationality or creed, away from the pollution and noise of the city.

• 10:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the words of a report issued by Boston's Floating Hospital in 1903, quote, "Physicians of the city who were consulted were in complete agreement as to the wonderful effects of sea air upon infants and young children, and especially when from any cause these babies were ailing or threatened by summer diseases. It was found to be a common practice with many physicians to send mothers with infants thus endangered upon daily jaunts in the marine park, or some similar open bordering upon saltwater, or to any available place where these benefits could be obtained." We'll talk about how the floating hospital actually got started after a sponsor break.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 11:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

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• 12:00Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 12:07Speaker 03

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• 12:12Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 12:16Speaker 03

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• 12:20Speaker 02

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• 12:24Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:09Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 14:19Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From Leather Bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only

• 15:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Several people worked with the Reverend Rufus B. Toby on establishing a hospitalship for children in Boston. One was his assistant Louis Freeman. Freeman's father had been part of a diplomatic delegation from Central America, and his mother was a black musical performer living in Washington DC prior to the Civil War. We don't have a ton of detail about his life, but Freeman had visited Boston as a child and had really fallen in love with it. And when he moved back to Boston as an adult, he got a job at Berkeley Temple. Freeman played a critical role in managing the finances and operations of the floating hospital for its entire shipboard existence.

• 16:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  He might have been the person who wrote the hospital's annual reports. Another was Edward Everett Hale, who was an author, a historian, and a Unitarian minister. Toby and Hale had both worked with the Seashore Homes Association, which was a charitable organization providing short seaside vacations to impoverished families in the summer. Hale was a key part of the fundraising effort for the hospitalship. Some of this was direct fundraising on his part, and some was through organizations that he had inspired. His 1870 novel, Ten Times One Is Ten: The Possible Reformation, was about the power of collective action, and it made frequent use of the phrase "lend a hand."

• 17:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Various social and charitable organizations had formed after its publication, calling themselves the 10x1 Society, or the Lend a Hand Club. Another prominent charity called the Monday Evening Club had also offered its support, and there were lots of individual donors, large and small. Eventually, they raised enough money to charter a barge called the Clifford, which took its first voyage as a floating hospital on July 25, 1894. A tugboat towed the Clifford out into the harbor at 9:00 in the morning, and it remained at anchor until the afternoon when the tugboat brought it back to the dock. This first voyage was really an experiment and an attempt to demonstrate

• 17:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  that there was a need for such a service in Boston. The Clifford was a recreational barge, so it had to be turned into a temporary hospital and then back again when it returned to the dock. In the words of a historical sketch of the floating hospital, published in 1903, "Before it could be made available for hospital uses, every belonging of an excursion boat must be removed and the barge prepared for the reception of hospital furniture. Thus, in the morning, hammocks were swung, cots were placed in position, and clothing for the children and apparatus for cooking food and sterilizing milk were taken aboard, all of which appliances had to be removed on the evening of the same day."

• 18:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  On that first trip, the floating hospital had two doctors, two nurses, and an assistant, who all volunteered their time. Big focus was on the healthful benefits of sea air, so not a ton of medical staff at that point. Tickets had been distributed through charities, dispensaries, hospitals, and doctors. They had to be signed by a doctor, indicating that a baby was sick and would benefit from the sea air, but did not have a contagious illness. Although some fathers did bring their children aboard overwhelmingly, babies and small children were brought by their mothers, older sisters, or other female relatives.

• 19:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Parents were also allowed to bring one healthy child under the age of six if they could not be left with someone else. All food on board was provided and paid for by charitable contributions. That included bottles for babies who were not being breastfed and meals for older children and caregivers. Because contaminated food and milk were such common sources of summertime illness, no other food was allowed and people's bags were searched and any food discarded before they could board. This rule about food was one of three rules printed on the back of the ticket, the other two being about bringing one healthy child if necessary and that the trip would be postponed in the event of stormy weather.

• 20:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  The staff used these bag searches as an opportunity to teach about food safety, trying as much as possible to avoid making mothers feel embarrassed or ashamed if they had food that had to be thrown away. There was a key difference between the approach to care at the Floating Hospital and most other medical services for children in Boston at the time. We already said those services were limited, but beyond that, parents were often intentionally excluded. There was just a running belief that poor mothers were part of the problem and were to blame for their children's illnesses. But the Floating Hospital welcomed parents aboard. In the word of a report written ahead of the 1895 season,

• 20:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  quote, "One of the chief objects aimed at in the Floating Hospital service is to place the responsibility for the care of the sick baby upon the mother. While onboard the Floating Hospital, a doctor and a nurse look out for its welfare. She is taught what to do for the child between trips and reports each time she returns with it. The experience thus acquired is invaluable."

• 21:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this included things like teaching mothers to prepare formula that was as safe and nutritious as possible, or to prepare some version of milk in the, in the earlier years that was as safe and nutritious as possible, how to clean and sterilize the baby bottles, and eventually offering affordable bottles and sterilizers for sale. In the first 1894 season, the Clifford took five hospital voyages. Roughly 1,100 babies and children received care on the barge, accompanied by about 650 mothers and other caregivers. In 1895, Toby and Freeman left Berkeley Temple to focus solely on the

• 21:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  floating hospital, establishing the Boston Floating Hospital Corporation. Money was raised for more voyages and a surgical ward was created, though surgery was not the main focus of the hospital. The majority of children treated at the floating hospital had some kind of gastrointestinal illness, but children with other diseases were treated as well, including those with bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infections, and various other diseases and conditions. In 1895, the Clifford took 13 trips into the harbor as a hospital, following the same basic pattern as the year before. Exactly where they went over the years usually depended on the weather. Louis Freeman

• 22:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  described it this way in a diary, quote, "We'd go out whenever there was a breeze. We'd leave the North End Pier at nine in the morning, go out into the Upper Harbor, then into the Lower Harbor, and down to Long Island opposite Deer Island. If the breeze got too heavy, we'd turn around and come back into Dorchester Bay and anchor down off of Thompson's Island. On Sunday, we'd go through Gull Hut and anchor off of Pemberton. Sometimes, if the air was just right, we'd travel up to Marblehead or go down to anchor off of Situate Light. But our favorite spot to anchor and have lunch was just off Boston Light. The lighthouse keeper would sound the foghorn in our honor, and the children would wave back."

• 23:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1896, the Floating Hospital operated daily over the summer months, except for Sundays. It was reorganized to have a board of managers and some paid staff. The scope of services that were offered aboard the Floating Hospital really grew. A kindergarten was established for the healthy children on board. A modified milk department was also created to prepare and bottle food for the babies. Over the years that followed, this grew into a food lab that was devoted to studying the nutritional content of milk substitutes and the nutritional needs of babies. That year, more than 3,500 people, including parents, benefited from some kind of care aboard the ship, and there were only three deaths.

• 24:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  All of that growth made it obvious that chartering a barge was no longer practical, and the Floating Hospital should just purchase the Clifford. The Floating Hospital was already a popular charity, in part because of feel-good coverage in Boston-area newspapers, and fundraising to buy the barge led to the establishment of named days, with larger donors having a day of sailing named after them. Later on, the hospital would do something similar with named beds. The hospital purchased the barge in 1897 and re-outfitted it to be permanently a hospital ship and to accommodate about 200 patients at a time.

• 24:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Owning the barge created some new opportunities for the hospital. Previously, children who needed additional care at the hospital could be issued a ticket for a subsequent sailing before disembarking. But especially in the first couple of years, that next sailing might not be on the following day. Owning the barge meant that the hospital could establish an inpatient department for 24-hour care of very sick children. The inpatient ward was described this way, quote, "For here are between 50 and 60 of the sickest babies in Boston and vicinity. Some of them have been selected from the sickest ones brought to the upper deck, and the parents persuaded to give them their only chance of life, which lies in careful,

• 25:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  persistent watching and nursing. By far, the larger part, however, are sent by the physicians of the city, who have come to realize that here is a last resort well worth trying." But this created a new need. Temperatures typically dropped overnight, but in the process, it also became a lot more humid around the harbor. The ship was very well ventilated. It was intentionally set up to get fresh air into the wards. But that hot stickiness could make conditions onboard really miserable, and patients often got worse overnight because of it. In some cases, critically ill children died and their cause of death was ultimately traced

• 26:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  back to the heat or the humidity. This was particularly true during an exceptionally hot summer in 1898. So they got air conditioning. In the words of a 1903 historical sketch of the hospital, quote, "Next to the purchase of the barge, the most important event in the history of the floating hospital was the installation of what is now known as the atmospheric plant, which, to quote one of our physicians, 'brings October weather into dog days.' Since the adoption of the permanent patient department, the good results accruing to this class of patients in the daytime on the open water were largely neutralized by the humidity of the August nights."

• 26:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  This system was modified from ones that were being used in chocolate factories, and its use at the floating hospital created one of the earliest air-conditioned hospital wards in the United States, if not the earliest. Here is how the atmospheric plant worked, drawn from that same 1903 write-up. Quote, "The air furnished the wards is drawn by the suction of a fan down a duct from above the upper deck into a receiver in the hold. In this receiver is placed two series of coils, one series being connected with the brine tank and through which circulates a brine at a temperature of about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and the other series being joined to an exhaust steam pipe, enabling steam

• 27:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  to be used for heating when necessary. The air, when entering the receiver, passes over the brine coils, and a large percent of its moisture is condensed on the coils. This action is a-" analogous to that observed in the winter of the moisture of the air of a warm steam room condensing on a windowpane cooled by the outside air. Then the air passes over the steam coils, is heated to any desirable temperature, and thus forced by the fan through the ducts into the wards. The quantity of air circulated is about 2,000 cubic feet per minute, which gives an average of more than 50 cubic feet per person per minute, an amount satisfactory

• 28:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  to the most critical, and which is obtained by very few ventilating systems. That 10-degree brine was made with ammonia, and this system allowed the air in the wards to remain at about 74 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 23 Celsius, and about 50% relative humidity, regardless of the weather outside. The atmospheric plant was installed in 1899, and that same year, a postgraduate nursing program was established at the Floating Hospital. It incorporated 11 or 12 lectures over the course of the season and hands-on work with the children who were being cared for on the ship. This transitioned a lot of the nursing care onboard from volunteers to trained nurses

• 29:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  who were continuing their education. By 1906, 113 nurses had earned postgraduate certificates from this program. In 1901, the Floating Hospital added a pathology lab, and it also started raising funds to build a new purpose-built ship. It wasn't just that the hospital's scope had grown so far beyond the benefits of fresh air and basic medical care for sick children. Demand had grown as well, and by 1902, staff were having to turn sick children away because there were just no more available beds. In 1905, 25 children had to be turned away on a single day.

• 29:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  The new ship set sail the following year, and we will talk about it after a sponsor break.

• 29:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 30:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 31:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 31:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 31:59Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 32:42Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 33:12Speaker 04

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• 33:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Boston Floating Hospital's new ship was 171 feet, or about 52 meters, long. It had a steel hull and a wooden superstructure, and it was built to be able to have its own steam engine, unlike the Clifford that had to be towed by a barge. The ship's new engine was installed before its second season in service, so that first season still being towed around. The atmospheric plant from the Clifford was also modified and installed on the new boat. The Boston Floating Hospital started its 1906 season aboard the Clifford because the purpose-built ship wasn't ready yet. A steel strike had caused some delays in its construction. The hospital moved to its new ship on August 14, 1906.

• 34:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  The new ship was staffed by a resident physician, several medical assistants, and between 40 and 50 graduate nurses. And then there were also visiting physicians who were part of the patients' care. It had four decks, all of them with hot and cold running water. There was an operating room, a food lab, a clinical lab, a pharmacy, a kitchen, and a cafeteria to serve meals to the parents and healthy children. The ship had staterooms for staff who were there overnight, and it still had the kindergarten that had been set up for the healthy children on the Clifford. The hold contained a laundry and equipment for sterilizing linens, as well as a mortuary and an autopsy room.

• 35:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  A 1906 write-up about the new ship described it this way, quote, "There are about 60 cribs grouped in four wards. Ward D has windows on two sides, which allow of nearly complete opening of the walls to fresh air. Ward C has no walls, only curtains, and is used chiefly for tuberculosis cases. Wards A and B are more completely protected and are supplied with an abundance of air at just the right temperature and humidity by our atmospheric plant. No contagious cases are taken. In case one develops while the boat is away from the wharf or is smuggled in, it is as completely isolated as possible."

• 35:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Side note, I am a little unclear on exactly how people were thinking of contagious while the Floating Hospital was operating. On the one hand, going back to its inception, the tickets had always clearly stated that children with contagious disease were not admitted. But like what Holly just read referenced tuberculosis cases. Tuberculosis had been defined as a contagious illness by like the 16th century. Robert Koch. Had presented findings isolating the tuberculosis bacillus in 1882. So people knew that tuberculosis was contagious. A lot of the diseases that were grouped together as cholera and phantom were also spread

• 36:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  through contaminated food or water or from person to person through inadequate hygiene. So that is also contagious. The focus on keeping contagious illnesses out of the floating hospital might have just been more focused on the diseases that were known to cause sudden, serious outbreaks among children. So things like diphtheria and measles. At the same time, preventing disease spread onboard the ship had always been a priority, going back to its very first voyages aboard the Clifford. The staff treated all cases of diarrheal illness as though they were contagious. Medical and nursing staff practiced thorough handwashing and infection control procedures.

• 37:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Linens were steam sanitized and the wards were regularly disinfected. The purpose-built ship was constructed so that wards could be open to the fresh air while also being isolated from one another so that one could be disinfected or fumigated without affecting care that was going on in the others. Milk was also tested for bacterial contamination in the food lab and the opening of the pathology lab allowed doctors to confirm diagnoses of various infectious diseases as well as to look for the specific causes of cholera and phantom. Another priority was fire safety. There were daily fire drills onboard, including practicing lowering the lifeboats and nurses

• 38:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  practiced passing bundles of cloth back and forth in the place of the babies they would need to be evacuating if a fire happens. By this point, the floating hospital wasn't exactly framing itself as a research hospital. Its primary focus had always been the care of children and the education of their parents and caregivers on how to treat and prevent the illnesses they were susceptible to in the summer. But it was unique in that it was devoted solely to children's care in the summer, which meant the doctors and nurses who worked there and other researchers who visited could learn more about these diseases over time. This included Dr. Simon Flexner of the University of Pennsylvania,

• 38:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  who visited for bacterial research in 1903. Flexner had identified the bacterium known as Shagella flexnere, which was one of the causes of diarrheal illness in 1900. One of the ongoing issues that the hospital had been feeding the patients, as we said earlier, the hospital was a popular charity, and that included grocery stores and other businesses donating food for the adults and the older children. Cow's milk was also donated by H.P. Hood Dairy, which was following very strict cleanliness and hygiene standards for the hospital's milk, so much so that the hospital tested it for bacterial contamination but didn't pasteurize it.

• 39:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Children were also being sent home from the hospital with enough milk for 24 hours when they were discharged. The food lab had an apparatus for processing, modifying, and bottling human milk, that went back to before the purpose-built ship, that made cow's milk more suitable for human babies. But having enough milk and being confident about its nutritional value for the babies was still a problem. Francis Parkman Denny, who ran the milk lab, was also an advocate of babies being fed human breast milk. Specifically, he thought there were ferments in the milk that activated ferments in the baby's blood, and that these ferments had a bactericidal effect

• 40:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  and improved the baby's digestion. One of the ways he tried to improve access to breast milk at the floating hospital was by working with the Boston Wet Nurse Directory, which was established by Fritz Bradley Talbot in 1910. Talbot and Denny were both visiting physicians at the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, which went by MIA, which was a home for orphaned and abandoned children. Talbot saw this directory as a way to help the babies at the asylum and to help the wet nurses. The wet nurses were often very young and unmarried and really didn't have another way to support themselves and their children. Unlike most other wet nurse jobs, nurses who were hired through Talbot's Directory

• 40:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  were allowed to keep their own children with them, and they fed those children themselves along with the children they were being paid to feed. Nurses from the Directory were paid $8 a week plus their room and board. There was also a breast milk collection program at the Floating Hospital, which Denny started in 1909. The hospital paid 60 cents per quart of collected breast milk. Participants in this program were given physical exams and screened for tuberculosis and syphilis. The hospital provided them with breast pumps and trained them on how to use and sanitize them and to store the pumped milk on ice. Participants in this program were often a little

• 41:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  more affluent than the wet nurses. They didn't need lodging in addition to their pay. Sometimes these were women whose children had died, or who just wanted to give something back to the hospital after their children had received medical treatment there. By the 1910s, researchers at the Floating Hospital's food lab were also really making advances in developing shelf-stable powders that would mimic human breast milk as closely as possible. The hospital already had equipment that could dehydrate milk products to be reconstituted later, but this also involved research into the chemical composition of milk from both cows and humans. This research was overseen by Dr. Alfred Bosworth, who was

• 42:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Director of Research at the hospital. Louise Giblin, who was one of the few women chemists in the United States at this point, was a critical part of the day-to-day work on this. Eventually, their work led to the development of the infant formula Similac, although that was after Bosworth had moved on from the Floating Hospital. He went to work for Kellogg's for a while before he started his own company. By the 1920s, rates of childhood death from summer illnesses in Boston had dropped significantly. Massachusetts started requiring milk to be pasteurized in 1921, which dramatically reduced the spread of milkborne illnesses. The city had also improved its sewage system,

• 43:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  which removed another source of spread for diarrheal illnesses. The Floating Hospital and other healthcare systems in the city had improved public health and medical care for children. The death rate from summertime diarrheal illnesses had been 30 to 40% in Boston at the end of the 19th century, and in 1926, it had dropped to a little more than 12%. On July 1, 1927, the Boston Floating Hospital caught fire, and it burned down to the hull. The cause of the fire is not known, but it may have spread to the ship from the dock. The hospital season hadn't started yet, so there were no patients or hospital staff on board,

• 43:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  and the crew members who were there safely evacuated. Initially, there were plans to rebuild the ship, but the hospital had really outgrown it. Instead, the ship was rebuilt as a tanker and operated as the Marshall B. Hall until it left service and was scrapped in 1952. The insurance payout from the fire was used to help build a new pediatric hospital, this time, though, on land. The original facility, still called the Floating Hospital, was on Ash Street. It opened in 1931. Care at that hospital continued to be free until 1938. The Boston Floating Hospital went through a series of relocations and changes and mergers over the years that followed.

• 44:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  It joined the New England Medical Center Consortium in 1930. It partnered with Tufts School of Medicine and the Boston Dispensary, and it later merged with those institutions. It continued to be known as the Floating Hospital until 2020, when it was renamed Tufts Medical Center. In January of 2022, Tufts announced that it was closing the 41-bed inpatient pediatric unit at the hospital and converting that to ICU space for adults. I cannot speak to the legitimacy of Tufts' financial and personnel decisions, but people in Boston were furious. Although New York's floating hospital,

• 45:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  which had served as an inspiration for the Boston Floating Hospital, no longer operates on the water today. It does still exist as a nonprofit organization focused on medically underserved communities there. And that's your episode about saving some babies. Saving a lot of babies. Do you have listener mail? Yeah, so this is from Jessie Ann and Jessie Ann wrote and said, "Hi Holly and Tracy, I just finished listening to the episodes this week about the Vietnam Draft Board raids. Hearing the names Philip and Daniel Barrigan took me back to college real quick. My bachelor's is in Religious Studies, a history of religion degree and not a theology degree. And one semester I took a class called Global Justice.

• 46:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Part of this class involved learning about religious movements geared towards social justice and the approaches to justice various thinkers took. Being one of those nerdy kids, I still have my notebooks from college and most of the papers I wrote. One of the papers I wrote in that class was on Philip Barrigan's autobiography, Fighting the Lamb's War. The part about the brothers that has always stuck out to me wasn't what he did with the draft cards during the Vietnam War, but that after the war, he and others broke into a warhead storage area and hammered on the warheads. This was some of what Philip wrote about in the book. Their plowshares actions, which began with the first break into a warhead storage facility in 1980,

• 46:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  got their name from Isaiah, Chapter 2, Verse 4. "They shall beat swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore." Aside from the book, another place you and others can see more of their impact is by going to jonahouse.org, which was a community Philip and his wife were a part of. I forget who made the comment during the episode that the brothers are interesting, but I agree so much with that. Growing up Catholic, I wish I had been taught about the social activism they and other Catholics had throughout history. I've attached pictures of the cats my brother and I had growing up. The black cat was my brother's and his

• 47:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  name was Leather. He was a hunter and enjoyed leaving presents at the back door for us. The tuxedo cat was mine and her name was Hearts. In the picture of my brother holding her, you can see the black patch in her paw shaped like a heart. She liked to bring lizards and crickets inside to terrorize us until we caught them and took them away from her. Thanks so much for bringing up some people in history I hadn't thought about in years, Jessie Ann. Jessie Ann, thank you for these kitty cat pictures. Kitties. Our kitty cats are exclusively indoor kitty cats, but on the occasion that a rodent

• 48:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  or insect or et cetera gets into the house, they immediately go after it. We have adorable pictures of cats lounging in the most lounging ways. So, thank you so much, Jessie Ann, for your email. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're [email protected]. You can subscribe to our show on the iHeart Radio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.

• 48:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 48:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced By Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee

• 49:38Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 50:28Tracy V. Wilson?

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