Health

In 1960, a new drug called thalidomide arrived for review at the FDA. Assuming the popular European drug would be a routine application, supervisors assigned its approval to their newest hire, Dr. Frances Kelsey. The drug's manufacturers claimed total safety and zero side effects, but Dr. Kelsey stood firm, demanding clinical data to prove their claims. And, in doing so, saved the United States from a public health catastrophe.

In the early 19th-century, Washington, D.C. had a problem: what to do with their population of the mentally ill. Dorothea Dix, a healthcare reform crusader from Massachusetts, came to their aid and, with a team of politicians and doctors, catalyzed the construction of what would come to be known as St. Elizabeths.

April 26, 1954, wasn’t an ordinary day at work for Dr. Richard Mulvaney. As McLean, Virginia’s first general practitioner, he treated all types of patients, but he’d never dealt with a situation like the one that awaited him at Franklin Sherman Elementary School that morning.

Ever wondered what those giant concrete cylinders lined up along Michigan Avenue are? Well, if you lived in D.C. at the turn of the twentieth century, they  might have saved your life.  

The American Experience film The Forgotten Plague details the impact of Tuberculosis on American society. TB was a problem everywhere. But, the disease hit few places as hard as it hit Washington, D.C. which had infection rates “higher even than that of Baltimore, where congestion and the economic situation are notoriously unfavorable.” (Sorry, Baltimore, apparently you were the measuring stick for terrible public health in the 1930s.)

Women’s fashion is a complicated subject, but one doesn’t usually think of it as deadly. However, the fatal dance between health and beauty was a reality for Washington women wearing corsets in the 19^th century.