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Why Did Sara Josephine Baker Launch A Public Health Revolution?

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It was in the 1890s that Sara Josephine Baker decided to become a doctor. By the time Baker retired from the New York City Health Department in 1923, she was famous across the nation for saving the lives of 90,000 inner-city children. The public health measures she implemented, many still in use today, have saved the lives of millions more worldwide. She was also a charming, funny storyteller, and her remarkable memoir, Fighting for Life, is an honest, unsentimental, and deeply compassionate account of how one American woman helped launch a public health revolution.3 Born in 1873, Baker grew up in a modestly prosperous Poughkeepsie family and studied medicine at the Women’s Medical College in Manhattan. After graduation, Baker worked as an …show more content…

Baker, who might well have been fired for making everyone else look bad, was lucky to have the support of the Tammany-affiliated but nevertheless reform-inclined mayor George McClellan, elected in 1903. He appointed a new health commissioner who dismissed the other inspectors and promoted Baker. In 1908, she was put in charge of the Health Department’s new Bureau of Child Hygiene, the first of its kind in the …show more content…

But the American Medical Association (AMA)—backed by powerful Republicans averse to spending money on social welfare—claimed the program was tantamount to Bolshevism. Baker was in Washington the day a young New England doctor explained the AMA’s position to a congressional committee: “We oppose this bill because, if you are going to save the lives of all these women and children at public expense, what inducement will there be for young men to study medicine?” Senator Sheppard, the chairman, stiffened and leaned forward: “Perhaps I didn’t understand you correctly,” he said: “You surely don’t mean that you want women and children to die unnecessarily or live in constant danger of sickness so there will be something for young doctors to do?” “Why not?” said the New England doctor, who did at least have the courage to admit the issue: “That’s the will of God, isn’t

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