Boston Floating Hospital

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. A couple of summers ago,
I had a little time to spend as I waited

(00:22):
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

(00:43):
Floating Hospital. That was a children's hospital that operated on
a boat in Boston Harbor in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. I was immediately intrigued 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

(01:03):
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 nineteenth century, poverty was
a serious problem in Boston, Massachusetts. The city had become
known for its so called Brahmin class, which was wealthy, elite,

(01:25):
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 numbers of
people had also moved to Boston from Ireland in the
wake of the Great Famine that started in eighteen forty five.
By eighteen fifty, Irish immigrants made up about a quarter

(01:48):
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

(02:12):
people who couldn't afford to do that. Definitely not enough
charitable work to provide care for everyone who needed it.
In terms of care, specifically for children. Boston Children's Hospital
was founded in eighteen sixty nine, but it was pretty
small at first. It only treated thirty patients. In its
first year in operation, it only had twenty beds. The

(02:35):
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 eighteen fifty five,
and the term pediatrics first appeared in writing two years
after that. Most of the vaccines that prevent deadly childhood

(02:57):
diseases today had not been developed yet, and the first
antibiotics were still decades away. So all this together meant
that in the late nineteenth century, childhood mortality rates in
Boston were very high. About ten percent of the children
in the city died before they turned five, and those
deaths disproportionately took place during the summertime. According to reports

(03:21):
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
and phantom, which was a catch all term for diarrheal
illnesses in children. In adults, this was usually called cholera morbis.

(03:44):
There were a couple of reasons why these illnesses were
a lot more common and also deadlier in the summer.
Today's home refrigeration techniques didn't exist yet, so at most
people might have an ice box, but even that was
often out of reach for the poorest families, so the
bacteria that caused a lot of these illnesses could really

(04:05):
thrive in unrefrigerated food in the warm weather. Modern air
conditioning also didn't exist yet, so children who got one
of these gastro intestinal 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

(04:26):
of Boston's poorest people were living in overcrowded, badly ventilated tenements,
often in parts of the city where 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

(04:50):
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

(05:10):
employer's children were breastfed. Today, formula is made to meat
baby's nutritional needs, and there are safeguards in place to
try to ensure that formula is as safe as possible.
None of those things were true in the late nineteenth century.
There were more than twenty brands of commercially made infant

(05:31):
food in existence by the eighteen eighties, 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.

(05:53):
Other alternatives included porridges and teas. These substitutes often were
not nutritional 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

(06:14):
have a way to adequately clean and sterilize their baby bottles.
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

(06:39):
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

(07:03):
for the community in academic subjects and in practical skills
like dressmaking and mechanical drawing. One night in the summer
of eighteen ninety three, Toby was returning home from work
and crossed the South Boston Bridge, also known as the
Dover Street Bridge. This bridge crossed four point Channel, which
extended farther inland than it does today, and it offered

(07:26):
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 to

(07:48):
the breeze that was coming off the harbor. Toby had
also heard about a hospital boat in New York City
called the Emma Abbot, which was named after an opera
singer who was one of its major benefactors. The Emma
Abbot had first launched in eighteen seventy five, but charitable
organizations had started funding trips around New York's harbors and

(08:09):
rivers in the late eighteen sixties 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. In the words

(08:32):
of a report issued by Boston's Floating Hospital in nineteen
oh three, 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

(08:52):
with many physicians to send mothers with infants thus endangered
upon daily johns in the marine park or some similar
oap been 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.

(09:21):
Several people worked with the Reverend Rufus B. Toby on
establishing a hospital ship for children in Boston. One was
his assistant, Lewis 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, d c. Prior
to the Civil War. We don't have a ton of

(09:43):
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. He might have

(10:03):
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.

(10:25):
Hale was a key part of the fundraising effort for
the hospital ship. Some of this was direct fundraising on
his part and some was through organizations that he had inspired.
His eighteen seventy 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.

(10:47):
Various social and charitable organizations had formed after its publication,
calling themselves the Ten Times One 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

(11:08):
money to charter a barge called the Clifford, which took
its first voyage as a floating hospital on July twenty fifth,
eighteen ninety four. A tugboat towed the Clifford out into
the harbor at nine 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 that there was a

(11:31):
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 nineteen oh three, quote,
before it could be made available for hospital uses, every
belonging of an excursion boat must be removed and the

(11:53):
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.
On that first trip, the floating hospital had two doctors,

(12:16):
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

(12:37):
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.
Parents were also allowed to bring one healthy child under

(12:58):
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

(13:20):
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. The staff used these bag searches as an

(13:40):
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. Time we already said those

(14:01):
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 eighteen

(14:22):
ninety five season, 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 on board 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

(14:42):
time she returns with it. The experience thus acquired is invaluable.
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 earlier years it
was as safe a new Chris as possible, how to
clean and sterilize the baby bottles, and eventually offering affordable

(15:06):
bottles and sterilizers for sale. In the first eighteen ninety
four season, the Clifford took five hospital voyages. Roughly eleven
hundred babies and children received care on the barge, accompanied
by about six hundred and fifty mothers and other caregivers.
In eighteen ninety five, Toby and Freeman left Berkeley Temple

(15:27):
to focus solely on the 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 gastro intestinal illness,

(15:48):
but children with other diseases were treated as well, including
those with bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infections, and various other diseases
and conditions. In eighteen ninety five, the cliff took thirteen
trips into the Harbor as a hospital, following the same
basic pattern as the year before. Exactly where they went

(16:08):
over the years usually depended on the weather. Lewis Freeman
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

(16:30):
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

(16:51):
foghorn in our honor and the children would wave back.
In eighteen ninety six, 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

(17:14):
on board. A modified milk department was also created to
prepare and bottle food for the babies. Over the years
that followed, this crew 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 thirty
five hundred people, including parents, benefited from some kind of

(17:36):
care aboard the ship, and there were only three deaths.
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

(18:00):
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 eighteen ninety seven and re outfitted
it to be permanently a hospital ship and to accommodate
about two hundred patients at a time. Owning the barge

(18:23):
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 twenty four

(18:45):
hour care of very sick children. The inpatient ward was
described this way quote for here are between fifty and
sixty 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,

(19:06):
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

(19:30):
well ventilated. It was intentionally set up to get fresh
air into the wards, but that hot stickiness could make
conditions on board 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 back to
the heat or the humidity. This was particularly true during

(19:53):
an exceptionally hot summer in eighteen ninety eight. So they
got air conditioning. In the words of a nineteen oh
three 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

(20:14):
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. This system was modified from ones
that were being used in chocolate factories, and its use

(20:38):
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 nineteen oh three ride up quote. The air furnished
the wards as drawn by the suction of a fan
down a duct from above the upper deck into a

(20:58):
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 ten degrees fahrenheit, and the other series being
joined to an exhaust steam pipe, enabling steam to be
used for heating when necessary. The air when entering the

(21:20):
receiver passes over the brine coils, and a large percent
of its moisture is condensed on the coils. This action
is analogous to that observed in the winter of the
moisture of the air of a warm steam room condensing
on a window pane 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

(21:43):
the ducts into the wards. The quantity of air circulated
is about two thousand cubic feet per minute, which gives
an average of more than fifty cubic feet per person
per minute, an amount satisfactory to the most critical and
which is obtained by very few ventilating systems. That ten
degree brine was made with ammonia, and this system allowed

(22:06):
the air in the wards to remain at about seventy
four degrees fahrenheit or about twenty three celsius and about
fifty percent relative humidity regardless of the weather outside. The
atmospheric plant was installed in eighteen ninety nine, and that
same year a postgraduate nursing program was established at the
Floating Hospital. It incorporated eleven or twelve lectures over the

(22:30):
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 on board from
volunteers to trained nurses who were continuing their education. By
nineteen oh six, one hundred and thirteen nurses had earned
postgraduate certificates from this program. In nineteen oh one, the

(22:53):
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
nineteen oh two staff were having to turn sick children

(23:13):
away because there were just no more available beds. In
nineteen oh five, twenty five children had to be turned
away on a single day. The new ship set sail
the following year, and we will talk about it after
a sponsor break. The Boston Floating Hospital's new ship was

(23:36):
one hundred and seventy one feet or about fifty two
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 if that first
season still being towed around that atmospheric plant from the

(23:58):
Clifford was also modified and installed on the new boat.
The Boston Floating Hospital started its nineteen oh six 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 fourteenth,
nineteen oh six. The new ship was staffed by a

(24:21):
resident physician, several medical assistants, and between forty and fifty
graduate nurses, and then there were also visiting physicians who
were part of the patient's care. That 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

(24:43):
to the parents and healthy children. The ship had state
rooms 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 autol room. A nineteen oh six write up
about the new ship described it this way quote, there

(25:06):
are about sixty 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

(25:28):
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. Side note, I am a
little unclear on exactly how people were thinking of contagious

(25:50):
while the floating hospital was operating. On the one hand,
going back to its inception, the tickets had always clearly
stated that children with cantagious disease were not admitted, but
like what Holly just read referenced tuberculous cases, tuberculosis had
been defined as a contagious illness by like the sixteenth century.

(26:12):
Robert Coke had presented findings isolating the tuberculosis bacillis in
eighteen eighty two, so people knew that tuberculosis was contagious.
A lot of the diseases that were grouped together as
cholera and phantom were also spread through contaminated food or water,
or from person to person through inadequate hygiene, so that

(26:33):
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 on board the ship

(26:53):
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 hand washing and infection control procedures.
Linens were steam sanitized, and the wards were regularly disinfected.

(27:15):
The purpose built ship was constructed so that words could
be opened 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

(27:36):
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 on board,
including practicing lowering the lifeboats and nurses practice passing bundles
of cloth back and forth in the place of the babies.

(27:58):
They would need to be a vacating 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

(28:20):
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 doctor Simon Flexner
of the University of Pennsylvania, who visited for bacterial research.
In nineteen oh three. Flexner had identified the bacterium known

(28:42):
as Shigella flexneri, which is one of the causes of
diarrheal illness. In nineteen hundred, 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

(29:06):
by hp 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. Children were also being sent home from the
hospital with enough milk for twenty four hours when they
were discharged. The food lab had an apparatus for processing

(29:30):
modifying and bottling human milk now 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

(29:50):
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 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

(30:12):
Wetnurse Directory, which was established by Fritz Bradley Talbot in
nineteen ten. 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 nursers

(30:35):
were often very young and unmarried and really didn't have
another way to support themselves in their children Unlike most
other wet nurse jobs, nurses who were hired through Talbot's
directory 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

(30:57):
were paid eight dollars a week, plus their room and board.
There was also a breast milk collection program at the
Floating Hospital, which Denny started in nineteen oh nine. The
hospital paid sixty cents per court of collected breast milk.
Participants in this program were given physical exams and screened
for tuberculosis and syphilis. The hospital provided them with breast

(31:21):
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 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

(31:41):
their children had received medical treatment there. By the nineteen teens,
researchers at the Floating Hospital's food lab were also really
making advances and developing shelf stable powders that would mimic
human breast milk as closely as possible. The hospital already
had a quick meant that could dehydrate milk products to

(32:02):
be reconstituted later, but this also involved research into the
chemical composition of milk from both cows and humans. This
research was overseen by doctor Alfred Bosworth, who was 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

(32:24):
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 nineteen twenties, rates of childhood
death from summer illnesses in Boston had dropped significantly. Massachusetts

(32:48):
started requiring milk to be pasteurized in nineteen twenty one,
which dramatically reduced the spread of milk borne illnesses. The
city had also improved its sewage system, 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

(33:12):
diarrheal illnesses had been thirty to forty percent in Boston
at the end of the nineteenth century, and in nineteen
twenty six it had dropped to a little more than
twelve percent. On July one, nineteen twenty seven, the Boston
Floating Hospital caught fire and it burned down to the hull.
The cause of the fire is not known, but it

(33:32):
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, and the crew members who
were there safely evacuated. Initially, there were plans to rebuild
the ship, but the hospital had really outgrown in Instead,
the ship was rebuilt as a tanker and operated as

(33:54):
the Marshall B Hall until it left service and was
scrapped in nineteen fifty two. 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
nineteen thirty one. Care at that hospital continued to be

(34:16):
free until nineteen thirty eight. The Boston Floating Hospital went
through a series of relocations and changes and mergers over
the years that followed. It joined the New England Medical
Center Consortium. In nineteen thirty, it partnered with Tough School
of Medicine and the Boston Dispensary, and it later merged

(34:36):
with those institutions. It continued to be known as the
Floating Hospital until twenty twenty, when it was renamed Tuff's
Medical Center. In January of twenty twenty two, Tuffts announced
that it was closing the forty one bed inpatient pediatric
unit at the hospital and converting that to ICU space

(34:56):
for adults. I cannot speak to the legitimacy of Huff's
financial and personnel decisions, but people in Boston were furious.
Although New York's Floating Hospital, 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

(35:17):
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
jesse Ann, and jesse Anne 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

(35:40):
Philip and Daniel Berrigan 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. Part of this class
involved learning about religious movements geared towards social justice and
the approaches to justice very thinkers took. Being one of

(36:01):
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 Berrigan'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 steering the Vietnam War, but that
after the war he and others broke into a warhead

(36:23):
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 nineteen eighty, got their name from Isaiah Chapter two,
verse four. They shall beat swords into plowshares and their
spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword

(36:45):
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 Jonahhouse dot Org,
which was a community Philip and his wife were a
part of. Good 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

(37:07):
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 name was Leather. He was a hunter
and enjoyed leaving presents at the back door for us.
The textedo cat was mine and her name was Hearts.
In the picture of my brother holding her, you can

(37:27):
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. Jesse and Jesse, and
thank you for these kitty cat pictures Kitty. Our kitty
cats are exclusively indoor kitty cats, but on the occasion

(37:52):
that a rodent or insect or etc. 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, Jesse, and for your email. If you would

(38:15):
like to send us a note about this or any
other podcasts or history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. You
can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and
anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For

(38:35):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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