diff --git a/content/session/historiespublichealth.md b/content/session/historiespublichealth.md index 15964ef..b852dff 100644 --- a/content/session/historiespublichealth.md +++ b/content/session/historiespublichealth.md @@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ Bevan, who came from a miners' family, was inspired by the Tredegar Workers Medi SOURCE: [How the Bad Blood Started](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/podcasts/1619-slavery-healthcare.html?action=click&module=audio-series-bar&pgtype=Article®ion=header), episode 4, *1619*, *New York Times* podcast. Hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones. September 13th, 2019. -In the fall of 1866, with a woman named Rebecca Lee Crumpler. Rebecca Lee Crumpler is a young black woman who was born free and raised in Pennsylvania by her aunt. Her aunt was a medicine woman. She used to go from home to home tending to the sick, and Rebecca liked to tag along and to help her. She liked it so much that she went on to become a nurse, and she was so good at being a nurse that she makes the really unusual decision to go on and become a doctor. So she eventually goes to the New England Female Medical College, which is a college that was specifically built to train women in medicine, and that’s really extraordinary. Because around the time she graduates, there’s about 54,000 doctors in the country, and only 300 of them are women, and only one of those women is black. And that woman is Rebecca Lee Crumpler. And so about a year after she finishes medical school, the Civil War comes to an end, and she makes another unusual decision, which is to completely uproot her life and to head down to the South because four million people have just been released from slavery into freedom. And Crumpler knows that it’s going to be a huge challenge to help these people assimilate into society and to address their many basic needs, including health care. +We begin this story in the fall of 1866, with a woman named Rebecca Lee Crumpler. Rebecca Lee Crumpler is a young black woman who was born free and raised in Pennsylvania by her aunt. Her aunt was a medicine woman. She used to go from home to home tending to the sick, and Rebecca liked to tag along and to help her. She liked it so much that she went on to become a nurse, and she was so good at being a nurse that she makes the really unusual decision to go on and become a doctor. So she eventually goes to the New England Female Medical College, which is a college that was specifically built to train women in medicine, and that’s really extraordinary. Because around the time she graduates, there’s about 54,000 doctors in the country, and only 300 of them are women, and only one of those women is black. And that woman is Rebecca Lee Crumpler. And so about a year after she finishes medical school, the Civil War comes to an end, and she makes another unusual decision, which is to completely uproot her life and to head down to the South because four million people have just been released from slavery into freedom. And Crumpler knows that it’s going to be a huge challenge to help these people assimilate into society and to address their many basic needs, including health care. These were people who just literally were told, you’re free to go, but given no resources to go with. So they were forced to take up residence in abandoned prisons, former military barracks, empty churches, refugee camps. They’re crammed together in very close living quarters. They don’t have the tools necessary to maintain good hygiene. And as a result of all of this, they’re getting sick. But they can’t tap into any health care system, because at that time, there really isn’t any organized health care system to speak of. Most medical care is provided at home by family members, or by doctors who would actually visit the house. And the only hospitals that exist are much more like institutions for the very poor or for people who get sick and don’t have any family members to take care of them. And those facilities were private, and they were run by charitable groups. And when the newly emancipated turned to those facilities for help, they were turned away. They were told no. And they start dying in really high numbers, so much so that in some towns and cities, their bodies are littering the streets.