CIVE 3800-01: Engineering Boston

Author Marilyn Thornton Williams recounts the history of public bathing in Boston and Chicago. Downloadable in PDF format.

Historical reports on disease and efforts to control disease in the City of Boston.

An article on the NYC anti-spitting campaign to stop the spread of tuberculosis. Similar campaigns were undertaken in major cities throughout the U.S., including Boston.

This 2018 Boston Magazine article discusses the extent of the city's rodent problem and efforts to control it.

Vital statistics for the city of Boston, with information on public health and causes of death.

The BPHC is the nation's oldest public health department and is tasked with promoting and providing health services to the city's residents.

Examines methods of waste collection, disposal, and incineration employed at the beginning of the 20th century.

A guide to the causes, signs, treatment, and prevention of tuberculosis for the general reader.

This article relates the story of the 1721 smallpox epidemic in Boston and the first use of inoculation in the American colonies by Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston. Mather had learned of the technique from his enslaved servant, Onesimus.

Chapter 3 of a 1988 report called 'The Future of Public Health" by the Institute of Medicine. Discusses the importance of Lemuel Shattuck's "Report of the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts" (1850).

An early history of the nation's first garden cemetery, dedicated in 1831. It provided a pleasant alternative to Boston's overcrowded and unsanitary burial grounds.

In this article from Appleton's Magazine, Harold Bolce provides an economic and public health argument against dirt roads and the use of horses in American cities.

This report provides histories of the city's ancient burial grounds. It also recommends that these cemeteries be closed and that no future burials be permitted within the city.

Describes the living conditions of Bostonians, the progress of the disease, and the steps taken to combat it.

This article examines the public health problems posed by horses, their urine and manure, and flies in American cities before the advent of the automobile.

Also known as "The Shattuck Report," this seminal document is considered a milestone in the history of American public health.

An overview of the agency's first five decades.

The essays within this report describe the disease and its spread within state-run institutions and within various industries. It also relates various programs to control the disease..

Typhoid fever is here described as a disease of urbanization and poor sanitary conditions.

A compilation by public health pioneer Lemuel Shattuck of Boston's Bills of Mortality.

A compilation of vital statistics gathered for six years, ending on May 31, 1890.