Stumbling Down the Road to Health

Quiz Webform ID
22415
date_published
Teaser

It seemed like a good idea at the time. . . Identify "healthful" ingredients.

quiz_instructions

In every era, people chase the shining ideal of long life and perfect health—but sometimes the tools they use harm more than help. From poisonous pills to deadly drinking water, the next best thing has often been anything but. Choose the correct answers for the questions below:

Quiz Answer

1. Calomel, made popular by physician and patriot Dr. Benjamin Rush in the late 18th century, was perhaps the most commonly prescribed medicine through the first half of the 19th century. In the 1850s, it was recognized that the most important ingredient, which induced salivation and vomiting, poisoned patients over the long run. What was that ingredient?

b. Mercury. Specifically, Mercurous chloride, which, when acted on by stomach acid, freed the mercury and settled in the joints, loosened the teeth, inflamed the gums, and, with continued or heavy use, could result in mental debility and death.

2. Starting in the 1930s, shoe stores commonly measured children's feet with a new machine. This machine promised to ensure precise fitting of shoes, allowing children's feet room to grow properly. The machines were banned in the 1950s, however, because they used what to measure the feet?

b. X-rays. The shoe stores' young customers were directed to stand up against a cabinet and place their feet, still in their shoes, inside. An x-ray image of their feet inside their shoes could then be viewed on a screen.

3. In the 1920s and 1930s, manufacturers of consumer goods identified a new "rejuvenating" and "reinvigorating" ingredient that they added to face cream, lipstick, sunburn cream, toothpaste, and chocolate. Most of these products were made in Europe and imported into the U.S., but they were all eventually banned as health risks. What ingredient caused concern?

a. Radium. The Radior Company in London manufactured radium-impregnated foundation power and other radioactive cosmetics. French and German manufacturers sold radium toothpaste and chocolate and also used thorium in cosmetics.

4. Beginning in 1870, General Augustus J. Pleasanton (1808-1894) publicly promoted bathing in light of a specific color. Pleasanton and his advocates believed the light was a panacea which would cure most ailments and give people supernormal physical and mental powers. From 1875 to 1877, replacing clear glass windowpanes with glass panes tinted this color became a national craze. What color was it?

c. Blue. The "Blue Glass Cure" was the brainchild of Pleasanton, who wrote The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and the Blue Colour of the Sky, in developing animal and vegetable life; in arresting disease, and in restoring health in acute and chronic disorders to human and domestic animals … in 1876.

5. From 1952 to 1956, manufacturer P. Lorillard sold its brand of Kent cigarettes with special "Micronite" filters. The filters were made of cellulose, acetate, and a third ingredient, intended to increase the cigarettes' ability to deliver less harmful smoke. Instead, this ingredient caused its own health concerns, leading Lorillard to discontinue its use. What was the ingredient?

a. Asbestos. Industrial workers mixed an especially pernicious form of asbestos with cellulose and acetate in huge machines to create Crocodilite fibers. Many of these workers later developed cancer.

6. From the 1860s and well into the 20th century, special belts were marketed to men. Designed to be worn around the waist (some with downward extensions), they were supposed to rejuvenate men who felt "weak" in some way. Magnets were sewn into the first belts, but by the 1880s, many belts used something else that aimed to "rejuvenate the flesh." What was it?

d. Electrical current. The first belts, with copper or silver discs sewn in, produced their weak current through soaking in salt water. Later belts used batteries to produce their current.

For more information

 health-image-ctlm.jpg For more on health in U.S. history (and the business, ethical and not, of medicine), search NHEC’s Website Reviews using Topic: Health and Medicine, to turn up reviews and links to websites including Duke University’s Medicine and Madison Avenue,—a collection of health-related advertisements from the 1910s through the 1950s—and the Eugenics Archive, an online archive and exhibit documenting a sinister health “fad."

The Hagley Museum and Library hosts a digital exhibit on patent medicines, while the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History offers the digital Balm of America: Patent Medicine Collection

If you want to bring some drama into your classroom, Donald W. Gregory’s play Radium Girls tells the story of a group of early 20th-century New Jersey factory girls who painted watch faces with “harmless" radium—and found themselves developing jaw cancer from “tipping" their paintbrushes on their tongues. The play also looks at the use of radium in other products, including health drinks, and the exposes and cover-ups that occurred when people began to learn about radium’s effects. Claudia Clark’s book Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform: 1910-1935 takes a scholarly, nonfictionalized look at the same story.

The Internet Archive provides the full text of Augustus Pleasonton’s The Influence of the Blue Ray of Sunlight ….

Sources
  • Ads for Dr. A. Reed Shoe Company X-Ray Shoe Fitter machines. Los
    Angeles Times
    , (Los Angeles, CA) 1929.
  • Ads for Radior cosmetic products. New York Times, (New York,
    NY) 1916-1919.
  • "Blue Glass Bonanza." Denver Daily News, (Denver, CO) Jun. 11, 1876.
  • "Blue Glass," sheet music, by Sam Devere, published by Louis Goullaud,
    Boston, 1877.
  • "Drs. Owen, Cheever, Heidelberg, Horne, Edison, Copeland, Sanden,
    Cook, Bennett, and Chrystal electric belts," 1875-1889, newspaper ad
    for Health and Strength Regained, 1896.
  • Gibbons, Roy. "Ban on X-Ray Shoe Fitting Devices Urged," Chicago
    Daily Tribune
    , (Chicago, IL) June 3, 1959.
  • Mack, E. "Blue Glass Schottische." Philadelphia: F. A North, 1877.
  • Oak Ridge Associated Universities. "Shoe-Fitting
    Flouroscope
    " Health Physics
    Historical Instrumentation Museum Collection
    . 26 January
    2010. http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm.
  • Pancoast, Seth.
    Blue
    and Red Light; or, Light and its rays as medicine; showing that light
    is the original and sole source of life …
    . Philadelphia: J.
    M. Stoddart, 1877.
  • Pleasanton, Augustus James. The
    Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight
    . Philadelphia:
    Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1876.
  • "States Urged: Outlaw X-Ray in Shoe Fitting," Chicago Daily
    Tribune
    , (Chicago, IL) August 26, 1958.
  • "Supernal Vision; the Culminating Scientific Discovery of the Century;
    Wonders of Blue Light: Females Seven Years of Age Developed into
    Full-Grown Women: Thought Becoming Apparent," St. Louis
    Globe-Democrat
    , (St. Louis, MO) July 16, 1876.
  • Youmans, E.L. "Editor's Table: Concerning 'Blue Glass,'" Popular
    Science Monthly
    , May-Oct. 1877.
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Take Me Out To The Ball Game: 100 Years of Musical History

Description

This Electronic Field Trip takes a look at the song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," written by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer a century ago. Today, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is synonymous with a baseball game's seventh-inning stretch, but the song was originally written to be performed on home pianos and the vaudeville stage.

Broadcast from Brooklyn, NY, this presentation explores not only the history of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", but also the influence of various musical styles of the past 100 years from vaudeville and swing to rock and hip hop.

Unpublished, as the page no longer exists.

Prison Camps in Postwar California

Answer

Teachinghistory.org, created by George Mason University's Center for History and New Media with funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is a non-profit web resource for K-12 teachers and administrators, which seeks to gather the highest quality U.S. history and teaching methodology resources on the world wide web.

Since 1994, George Mason University's Center for History and New Media has used digital media and computer technology to change the ways that scholars, students, and the general public learn about and use the past. We do that by bringing together the most exciting and innovative digital media with the latest and best historical scholarship. For more information about the center please see: chnm
Thank you for your assistance, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

For more information

Janssen, Volker. "When the 'Jungle Met the Forest: Public Works, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California." Journal of American History96 (Dec. 2009), 702–26. Accessed May 1, 2011.

Bibliography

Fill in later

Worklore: Brooklyn Workers Speak

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Photo, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel Construction Workers, 1947
Annotation

This site explores the work lives of Brooklynites (historic and present) as they made their living in the borough. The site has four main sections: Confronting Racial Bias documents discrimination in the workplace; Women Breaking Barriers examines the ways in which women's work roles changed over the decades; Seeking a Better Life takes a look at the issues facing new immigrants; and Changes in the Workplace discusses challenges such as unemployment and job displacement.

Each section contains an approximately 2,000-word article on its respective topic, photographs, and audio files of people speaking about their various vocations. The site also includes eight help wanted advertisements from the 1850s, 1860s, 1920s, and 1930s.

Visitors should not miss the interactive feature Can You Make Ends Meet?, where they can pick one of four vocations, and see if they can stretch their salary out to adequately include housing, transportation, and entertainment.

Telling Your Story allows visitors to share their own recollections of Brooklyn life. The site includes few primary sources, but the personal stories of Brooklyn workers may be useful to students, teachers, or researchers.

Brown@50: Fulfilling the Promise

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Photo, School integration. Barnard School, Washington, D.C., May 27, 1955
Annotation

Created for the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, this website provides the legal history of the court case, and focuses attention on Howard University's contributions.

The website is divided into five main sections. Chronology presents a timeline of events and offers links to external resources. Brief History is a concise background of the Brown v. Board case and an overview of the case details and impact. Cases & Other Law provides a "legal road to Brown," with court decisions leading up to and following the Brown decision. Biographical Sketches introduces key figures. And Educational & Other Resources links to a wide variety of external websites and resources pertaining both to Brown v. Board of Education and to civil rights more generally.

Brown@50 will be especially useful to those researching the legal arguments of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.

SpaceProgramArchive.com

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Photo from Press Telegram, February 1, 1958
Annotation

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, effectively beginning the "space race" with the U.S. that would last throughout the Cold War. Sputnik followed more than 25 years of research by scientists interested in rocket propulsion. This extensive archive presents more than 50,000 scanned newspaper pages, shedding light on virtually all aspects of the space program from 1930 through 2009. A good place to begin is the website's "Timeline" section, which highlights prominent events in the history of space discovery, such as the Guggenheim Foundation's decision in 1935 to support Dr. Robert H. Goddard's research into self-propelled rockets, and the launch of the Challenger in 1985 which made Sally Ride America's first woman in space. It also provides links to newspaper articles. An "Advanced Search" features allows users to input specific search terms and dates and retrieve newspaper pages—primarily from newspapers published in smaller and medium-sized cities in the south, mid-west, and California (Fresno, Jefferson City, Tuscon, Danville, VA) covering those events. The archive's decision to provide full scanned newspaper pages (as opposed to transcribed articles) allows users to better historically contextualize these events with other prominent contemporaneous events.

Classic African American Literature

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Logo, Multicultural Pavilion
Annotation

Provides links to 49 full-text versions of books, essays, articles, and poems about African-American life and culture, from the 18th century to the present day. Authors represented include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chester W. Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Marcus Garvey, Rita Dove, Booker T. Washington, Phillis Wheatley, and Maya Angelou. Many texts are from the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center.

Doing Oral History

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Photo, From project, "The Stonewall Riots and Their Aftermath"
Annotation

A collection of 17 oral histories conducted by secondary students focusing on topics relating to "The American Century": World War II; the Cold War; Vietnam; the "rights revolution"; immigration; education; and science and technology. Each oral history entry contains a biography of the interviewee, historical contextualization and evaluation essays, and bibliography.

The site provides tools for teachers to use in designing oral history courses: release form for interviewees, pre-interview worksheet, "do's and don'ts," guidelines for transcribing and editing interviews, how to analyze the historical value of an interview, grading rubrics, and student feedback. Also offers a 36-title bibliography, including 24 links to related sites. Of interest to teachers preparing oral history courses and for those studying selected 20th-century American history topics.

Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum

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Travel guide, Rand, McNally, & Co., 1871
Annotation

On May 10, 1869, in Promontory Summit, UT, a rail line from Sacramento, CA met with another line from Omaha, NE. When the last spike was driven, the Central Pacific became the first transcontinental railroad. This site provides a vast collection of online materials documenting the history of the Central Pacific Railroad and rail travel in general, as well as material on the history of photography. The site boasts more than 2,000 photographs and images, including stereographs by Alfred Hart and Eadweard Muybridge; engravings and illustrations from magazines, travel brochures, and journals; and more than 400 railroad and travel maps. Also included are more than 60 links to images and transcriptions of primary documents dealing with the construction and operation of the railroad, including government reports, travel accounts and diaries, magazine and journal articles, travel guides, and railroad schedules.

A separate section documents the Chinese-American contribution to the transcontinental railroad, including four scholarly articles, two links to Harper's Weekly articles and illustrations about Chinese workers, a bibliography of 15 scholarly works, and links to more than 20 related websites. Timelines on the building of the transcontinental railroad from 1838 to 1869, the history of photography from 1826 to 1992, and the development of the railroad from 1630 to 1986 also help to contextualize the history of the railroad in America. The volume of information on the home pages make this site slow loading, unwieldy, and confusing to navigate, and there are no descriptive captions or other information on most of the images. But the site is keyword searchable, and for those interested in the history of railroads, this site is certainly worth the time.

The North Star: A Journal of African-American Religious History

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Logo, North Star Journal
Annotation

The complete archives and current editions of a journal about African-American religious history from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The first issue was published online in the fall of 1997. Each issue includes one or two scholarly articles of 30 to 40 pages, two to four book reviews, and a 200- to 2000-word discussion of research resources. In addition, each issue provides a list of Internet resources for research in African-American Religious history. Articles address topics such as "church media and racial discourse" (Lawrence Little) and "rap, religion and the politics of a culture," (Charise Cheney). The site will be useful for research in African American history and the history of religion in America.