FYI.  Griscom was an temperance sanitarian.  I have a piece on his _Uses
and Abuses of Air_ in my forthcoming edition of _Ten Nights in a
Bar-Room_. --Jon

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Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 01:00:01 -0500
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Subject: ANB - Bio Of The Day

The following biography is from the American National Biography,
published by Oxford University Press. Copyright 1999 ACLS.


Griscom, John Hoskins (14 Aug. 1809-28 Apr. 1874), physician and
sanitarian, was born in New York, New York, the son of John Griscom,
an educator and chemist, and Abigail Hoskins. He attended the
Collegiate School of Friends and the New York High School, a school
owned and run by his father, where he absorbed the elder Griscom's
Quaker, philanthropic, and scientific outlook. After studying with
anatomist John D. Godman and surgeon Valentine Mott and attending
medical lectures at Rutgers Medical College, Griscom transferred to
the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his M.D. in 1832.
Appointed assistant physician to the New York Dispensary in 1833, he
was promoted to physician a year later. He married Henrietta Peale,
daughter of painter Rembrandt Peale, in 1835; they had eight
children. He purchased the goodwill of a retiring New York City
physician in 1837, acquiring a practice that he maintained until his
death.

In addition to his private practice, Griscom held scientific and
medical posts throughout his life, including professor of chemistry
at the College of Pharmacy in New York from 1836 to 1838 and
physician to the New York Hospital from 1843 to 1870. In 1840 he
published Animal Mechanism and Physiology, which ran through several
editions. His participation in the founding of the New York Academy
of Medicine in 1846, his service as its vice president in 1854, and
his work with the American Medical Association demonstrated his
commitment to improving the status of the medical profession.

Griscom believed that, through the analysis of vital statistics,
humankind could understand nature's laws and thereby design
appropriate sanitary reforms to prevent illness and premature death.
During his tenure as city inspector and as head of the New York City
Health Department (1842), Griscom improved the reliability of the
city's mortality statistics. He accomplished this by successfully
promoting an ordinance requiring a city inspector's permit before
the dead could be transported beyond the city limits. Although he
was removed from these posts after a year because of his plans for
reorganizing the structure of the city health department, he used
the information gathered during these municipal appointments to form
the basis of his most important work, The Sanitary Condition of the
Laboring Population of New York (1845). Modeled on Edwin Chadwick's
work on Great Britain, this report correlated the higher morbidity
rate among the laboring class with their overcrowded, unventilated
tenement living conditions. For Griscom, tenement reform required
the provision of better ventilation so that the inhabitants might
live in accordance with nature's laws. Cramped, unventilated spaces
forced people to live in close quarters and breathe vitiated air,
leading to a progression from declining morals to depression,
illness, and unemployment.

Griscom's solution to this problem reveals his pietistic education
and utilitarian outlook; for him, improving the physical health and
moral sensibilities of the poor through education and legislation
would benefit society as a whole. The poor, once freed from the ills
of tenement living, would become useful and productive members of
society. In The Uses and Abuses of Air (1850), he again stressed the
importance of proper ventilation and offered concrete solutions for
achieving it. Griscom's belief that immigrants and prisoners would
benefit from these reforms is shown in the medical and sanitary
rules he developed for the Emigrant Refuge and Hospital on Ward's
Island while serving as Commissioner of Emigration (1848-1851) and
in his well-known report Prison Hygiene (1868) for the New York
Prison Association.

Griscom's influence extended beyond the confines of New York City.
He corresponded with Massachusetts sanitarians Lemuel Shattuck and
Edward Jarvis. In 1859 he presided over the Third National
Quarantine Convention, confirming his national reputation. Griscom
remained active in New York sanitary reform until his death. His
tireless letter campaign contributed to the success of the
Metropolitan Health Act of 1866, which established a Board of Health
for New York City and served as a model for cities nationwide.
Through his writings, lectures, and public service, John Hoskins
Griscom helped lay the foundation for mid-nineteenth-century urban
public health reform in the United States. His ideas came to
fruition in the late nineteenth century with tenement reform laws
and in the writings of later reformers including those of Jacob
Riis. He died in New York City.

Bibliography
Few manuscript letters of John Griscom survive; these are located in
the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society (Gulian
Verplanck Papers), the Henry E. Huntington Library of San Marino,
Calif., and in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard
University, (Edward Jarvis Papers). The Medical and Surgical
Reporter (Jan.-Apr. 1866) and the New Jersey Medical and Surgical
Reporter (Feb. 1856-Mar. 1858) contain Griscom's printed letters. In
the latter he published under the name of J. Gotham, Jr. His other
published works include First Lessons in Human Physiology (1846),
Anniversary Discourse before the New York Academy of Medicine
(1855), The Memoir of John Griscom, L.L.D. (1859), and Sanitary
Legislation, Past and Future (1861). Duncan Robert Jamieson,
"Towards a Cleaner New York: John H. Griscom and New York's Public
Health, 1830-1870" (Ph.D. diss., Mich. State Univ., 1972), provides
a detailed chronology of Griscom's life as well as a primary
bibliography and an annotated secondary bibliography. See also James
H. Cassedy, "The Roots of American Sanitary Reform, 1843-1847: Seven
Letters from John H. Griscom to Lemuel Shattuck," Journal of the
History of Medicine 30 (Apr. 1975): 136-47; Charles E. Rosenberg and
Carroll Smith Rosenberg, "Pietism and the Origins of the Public
Health Movement: A Note on John H. Griscom and Robert M. Hartley,"
Journal of the History of Medicine 23 (Jan. 1968): 16-35; and Samuel
W. Francis, "John H. Griscom," Medical and Surgical Reporter 15
(1866): 118-22.

Written by Carolyn G. Shapiro


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