March 24, 1913

New York, New York

Health/Death, Women, Progressive Reformers, Urban Society, Food Regulation

Urban infants in the 1840s had only a 50 percent chance of living to the age of five. Progressive reformers believed that high infant mortality was linked to adulterated and infectious milk, a concern that remained even after New York passed regulation laws. On March 25, 1913, the Committee of Women's Organizations of the New York Milk Committee held a meeting to educate mothers living in the tenements...

September, 1985 to 1985

District of Columbia, District of Columbia

washington d.c., cholera

In September of 1865, citizens of the city of Washington D.C. heard troubling tales from across the Atlantic of a rapidly westward spreading plague of Cholera.  The disease caused victims to experience extreme diarrhea until dehydration set in.  Without replenishment of fluids, victims were doomed causing around a 50% fatality rate.  Newspapers described it as a disease “so fatal…it begins with...