A Pictorial History of Public Health in South Carolina

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A Pictorial History of Public Health in South
Carolina

• Max Learner, Ph.D.
• Bureau of Maternal and Child Health
• Department of Health and Environmental Control
• February 2001

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Colonial Times
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Colonial Public Health Events

• 1670 Charles Towne is established as an English
  Colony
• Provincial Legislature forbids swine from
  running free in the city of Charleston and
  instructs all property owners to refrain from
  littering their land and to cut stinking weed in
  and about the lots and streets.
• 1698 Provincial Legislature requires incoming
  vessels to produce evidence that no persons on
  board are suffering from a contagious disease
  before the ship could dock in Charleston Harbor.

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Colonial Public Health Events

• 1699 First yellow fever epidemic in Charleston
  kills about 160 of estimated 3,000 residents. A
  most infectious pestilential and mortal
  distemper...which from Barbados or Providence was
  brought in among us in Charles Town about the
  28th or 29th of Aug. last past....This Distemper
  from the time of its beginning aforesaid to the
  first day of November killed in Charles Town at
  least 160 persons. Among the victims were the
  chief justice, receiver-general, provost
  marshal, and almost half of the assembly.
• From Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America,1953,
  p. 143

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Colonial Public Health Events

• A brick pest house is constructed on Sullivans
  Island for isolation of individuals suffering
  from contagious diseases.
• 1711 Yellow fever and smallpox epidemics in
  Charleston. Gideon Johnson wrote on November 11,
  1711 Never was there a more sickly or fatall
  season than this for the small Pox, Pestilential
  ffeavers, Pleurisies and ffluxs have destroyed
  numbers here of all sorts, both Whites Blacks and
  Indians. From Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial
  America,1953, p. 75.

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Colonial Public Health Events

• 1712 Provincial Legislature passes an act that
  created the first provincial health officer in
  America. Commissioner Gilbert Guttery was the
  first, and last, person to hold the position,
  which was abolished in 1721.

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National Library of Medicine
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National Library of Medicine
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Colonial Public Health Events

• 1760 Smallpox epidemic in Charleston, one of the
  worst in the colonial period. In a population
  estimated at 8,000, there were an estimated 6,000
  cases and over 730 deaths, or 9 of the
  population. From Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial
  America,1953, pp. 94-95.
• 1790's Yellow fever epidemics occur each year
  in Charleston. The worst outbreak kills 362 in
  1799. The 1790 population was approximately
  16,920.

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Yellow Fever Epidemics in South Carolina

• 1699 First yellow fever epidemic in Charleston
• 1700s Yellow fever epidemics were recorded in
  Charleston in 1706, 1711, 1717, 1718, 1719,
  1730-1739, 1745, 1748, 1790-99
• 1800's Yellow fever epidemics were recorded in
  Charleston in 1800, 1802, 1804, 1817, 1820, 1821,
  1824, 1827, 1828, 1838, 1839, 1849, 1852, 1854,
  1856, 1858, 1864, 1871, and 1876.

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Ante-Bellum Public Health

• 1808 The City of Charleston establishes a Board
  of Health with 13 commissioners.
• 1814 The Ladies Benevolent Society of
  Charleston begins volunteer care of the sick and
  needy in Charleston - this is the starting point
  for nursing care in South Carolina.
• 1824 Medical College of South Carolina is
  established by the state Legislature, but not
  funded. The faculty establish it, anyway.
• 1828 Robert Mills Building opens as the sixth
  state supported mental asylum in the United
  States.

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National Library of Medicine
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Public Health After the Civil War
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Library of Congress
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National Archives and Records
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1878

• US Congress passed Federal Quarantine Legislation
  in April
• A yellow fever epidemic struck the Mississippi
  Valley from July to October. New Orleans and
  Memphis were hard hit. Over 20,000 people died.

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(No Transcript)
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Creation of the State Board of Health

• In December, 1878, the SC General Assembly
  created the State Board of Health

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Library of Congress
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Board of Healths Finances

• State appropriation 2,000
• The Secretary of the Board was a paid part-time
  employee. Dr. Henry Fraser was paid 500 per
  year. He served from 1879 to 1895 as the
  Secretary.

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Public Health Issues in 1881

• Bills to establish sanitary code, registration of
  vital statistics, licensing of the practice of
  medicine were introduced, but not passed
• Scarlet fever epidemic in Charleston
• German measles epidemic statewide

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Public Health Issues in 1881

• Weather
• Food adulteration
• Malaria
• Dysentery
• Consumption (Tuberculosis)
• Smallpox

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1890

• Budget 2,492.67, expenditures 2,025.87
• 34 counties had local boards of health in one or
  more towns. The local boards failed to send in
  reports, with very few exceptions.
• Influenza struck the state, but was not of a
  deadly nature

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1900s
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(No Transcript)
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National Archives
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1910s
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1920s
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1930s
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1940s
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1950s
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1960s
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State Public Health Buildings
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Environmental Control
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Environmental Control