Precious Cargo on Board
in the North End
The 170-foot-long Boston Floating Hospital pictured on this postcard, was the first vessel built in the U.S. specifically to serve as a hospital ship. It included four decks, one with six wards for up to 100 permanent patients and a top deck for 150–200 day patients.
In the late 1800s, summers brought a heartbreaking spike in the number of children who died, especially in Boston’s congested, poor neighborhoods. Few medicines existed at the time, but people believed sea air could help restore health. Social activists seized on the idea and solicited charitable gifts. In 1894, a barge pulled by tugs—the first Boston Floating Hospital—began taking mothers and their sick little ones on day trips around Boston Harbor.
Thousands of children benefited from fresh air, nutritious food, and compassionate medical care. The sickest patients could stay overnight on the vessel. Soon demand exceeded capacity, and fundraising began for a custom built ship. In 1906, the new Boston Floating Hospital began its daily summer trips from North Pier—located here.
Then in June 1927, a fire destroyed the beloved ship. It would not be replaced. Childhood ailments had changed thanks to medical advances, and the decision was made that children would be best served at a land-based Floating Hospital for Children. It exists today as Tufts Children’s Hospital.
In the 1920s, with life-threatening intestinal diseases under better control, Floating Hospital shifted its focus to treating rickets with heliotherapy—exposure to the sun
Courtesy of Tufts Medical Center Archives
An average of 200 children and their mothers boarded the Boston Floating Hospi-tal every day it sailed, July through mid-September. Staff encouraged mothers to participate in their child’s care on board and taught safe food prepara-tion and hygiene. Mothers of children on the perma-nent wards could be on board every day the vessel sailed.
Courtesy of Tufts Medical Center Archives
Thousands of compassion-ate donors ensured that the Floating Hospital sailed from 1894 to 1927 at no charge to families. Indivi-duals could sponsor a trip, pay for essentials like cribs, or make gifts to help cover staff salaries and the ship’s operating expenses. Boston’s newspapers often published lists of donors and stories about fund-raising events.
Courtesy of Tufts Medical Center Archives
Care on board the Floating Hospital was free, but each child needed a ticket issued by a doctor. To prevent infecting others, no one with a contagious disease was allowed to board.
Courtesy of Tufts Medical Center Archives
Sign Location
More …
Yes, in July 2022. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/01/20/metro/tufts-medical-center-will-close-its-pediatric-hospital-after-more-than-century-treating-sick-kids/
The Reverend Rufus B. Tobey, minister at the Berkeley Temple close to Boston’s poorest neighborhoods, was appalled at the hundreds of Boston children under age 5 who died every year. Hot summer months were especially dangerous with deaths sometimes increasing five-fold. In 1893, 2,704 children in Massachusetts died of cholera infantum (a term used at the time to describe an acute intestinal infection); 88.6 percent of these deaths occurred during the summer.
Reverend Tobey learned of a floating hospital in New York City that sailed around the harbor three times a week during the summer. When he heard that a barge in Boston was available for charter, he led the effort to give the idea of a floating hospital in Boston a try. His goal for the Floating Hospital was more ambitious, however. He envisioned—and soon made real—daily trips for as many sick babies and their mothers as possible, from the poorest quarters of the city.
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Lewis Freeman was in charge of finances and daily operations during the vessels’ combined 32 years of service. He worked closely with Boston Floating Hospital founder, the Reverend Rufus Tobey–the public face for the Floating Hospital.
In his journal Mr. Freeman described the hospital ship’s trips: “We’d go out whenever there was a breeze. We’d leave the North End pier at 9 in the morning; go out into the upper harbor, then into the lower harbor and down to Long Island opposite Deer Island. If the breeze got too heavy, we’d turn around and come back into Dorchester Bay and anchor down off Thompson’s Island. On Sunday, we’d go through Hull Gut and anchor off Pemberton. Sometimes if the air was just right, we’d travel up to Marblehead or go down to anchor off Scituate Light. But our favorite spot to anchor and have lunch was just off Boston Light. The lighthouse keeper would sound the foghorn in our honor, and the children would wave back.”
Mr. Freeman was African American. Extensive searches in the Tufts archives have not unearthed a single photograph of the man who “ran the show.” To our regret, though we found Mr. Freeman’s obituary, additional online searches have not been successful in finding descendants or any other information about this remarkable man. We welcome any additional information anyone might have.
One of the most dangerous diseases to strike young children in the 19th and early 20th century was cholera infantum, acute intestinal infections tied closely to contaminated milk and food. At the time, the precise bacterial cause was not known. No remedy existed, and children died from symptoms including severe dehydration and fever. Most milk was not pasteurized at the time. Many Boston families living in extreme poverty, in crowded, unsanitary tenements had no access to refrigeration. Milk was an ideal medium in which bacteria could grow and hot weather enabled the bacteria to flourish even more. Cholera infantum was a major reason for Floating Hospital admissions for many years.
Major public health initiatives brought an end to this particular cause of childhood deaths. The pasteurization of milk was finally required in Massachusetts in 1921–more than 50 years after French biologist Louis Pasteur had demonstrated its efficacy. In addition, hygiene and sewerage in the city had improved. The permanent patient population at the Floating Hospital was proof of progress. By 1924, only 8 of 230 children staying overnight had the life-threatening intestinal infection.
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In the first couple of years, the staff was all-volunteer—two doctors, several medical students and three nurses. By 1900, however, all the nurses were nursing school graduates. The Floating Hospital also served as an ideal setting for nurses to further their skills. They came from all over the country to earn post-graduate certificates in pediatrics on board the ship. In 1911, the Boston Daily Globe reported that the Floating Hospital began its season with 20 doctors and 60 nurses.
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With as many as 200 babies and young children being cared for on the Floating each day, the need for breast milk overwhelmed what on-board mothers could provide. Supplying enough milk became an overwhelming daily effort. One creative solution was to initiate a “milk bank.” Starting in 1910, special teams of Floating Hospital nurses went out into Boston’s neighborhoods to seek contributions to a “milk bank.” Nursing women who had an excess of milk due to sickness or death of their newborn baby were paid for their donations. The unique program was a great success and at its peak supplied gallons of milk to the hospital’s babies each day.
Milk, preferably breast milk, was seen as a necessary component of bringing sick babies back to health. However getting the quantities needed each day (even with the successful milk bank program) was an ongoing challenge. In 1916, Floating Hospital’s research chemists headed by Director of Research Dr. Alfred Bosworth undertook a major effort to develop a non-perishable chemical product—as close to breast milk as possible. Dr. Bosworth, along with a dedicated team led by one of the country’s few certified woman chemists, Louise Giblin, successfully broke down the various parts of cow’s milk and reorganized them in proportions close to breast milk. A Floating Hospital colleague claimed the powdered milk was “the best substitute for breast milk so all-important in infant feeding.” In a decision hospital trustees likely regretted just a few years later, they both decided to stop supporting Dr. Bosworth’s work and in 1922 relinquished the patent.
Dr. Bosworth left Floating Hospital in 1921 when hospital trustees declined to keep supporting his research. He updated the powdered formula he had developed, and in 1923, applied for and received a new patent. The following year found him working in Ohio, where he met Stanley Ross of Moores and Ross Milk and Ice Cream Company. Mr. Ross recognized the potential of Dr. Bosworth’s powdered milk formula, and the two men agreed that Ross would produce and market the product. It was first marketed as Franklin Infant Food. Later, the formula’s name was changed to Similac®, to capture its close resemblance to milk. It became an extraordinary successful product, its name synonymous with infant formula.
As an elderly man, Dr. Bosworth distanced himself from the history of formula, deeply disturbed by the way it had been marketed as a replacement for breastmilk. According to writer Hannah Ryan in Making Milk: The Past, Present & Future of Our Primary Food, Dr. Bosworth “revered” breast milk as the ideal milk for infants. He had never intended his formula be sold as an equivalent.
Dr. Bosworth’s patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US1450836A/en
For more about Similac: https://www.nutritionnews.abbott/our-history.html
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Ross_Laboratories
Source: Making Milk: The Past, Present and Future of Our Primary Food. Eds Mathilde Cohen and Yoriko Otomo. “’Cow’s Milk if for Calves, Breastmilk is for Babies’ Alfred Bosworth’s Reconstituted Milk and the Woman Who Innovated Infant Feeding Amid an American Health Crisis,” by Hannah Ryan. Bloomsbury, 2017.
Yes, the first children’s hospital in the U.S. was Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, founded in 1855. Boston Children’s Hospital was founded in 1869. By 1900, there were 24 children’s hospitals in the country, but only the Floating was on board a vessel.
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The numbers of infants and young children with similar diseases in one place—the ship—gave doctors the opportunity to advance diagnosis and treatment of some of the most dangerous diseases, including cholera infantum, a catch-all term for acute intestinal infections. In the ship’s pathology lab, doctors tried to determine which bacteria were causing a child’s ailment. Milk was boiled to ensure its safety. (And mothers were taught safe food preparation measures as well.) Infant formula, which became known as Similac, was first developed in partnership with the Floating Hospital. In an August 8, 1924 article titled, “Floating Hospital Using Sun’s and Ultraviolet Rays to Cure Rickets,” the Boston Daily Globe reported on three years of experimenting with “sun baths… science’s latest and most successful method” for treating rickets—a disease usually caused by prolonged and extreme lack of vitamin D.
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Resources
- Bloomberg, Robert and Daniel Bird. Tufts Medical Center Images of America. Arcadia Publishing, 2015.
- Prinz, Lucie with Jacoba van Schaik. The Boston Floating Hospital: How a Boston Harbor Barge Changed the Course of Pediatric Medicine. Tufts Medical Center, 2014.
- Multiple articles in the Boston Daily Globe, 1894–1927 including
- “Life for Babes: First Trip of the Floating Hospital Barge,” July 26, 1894.
- “Pictures of Pathos on the Health Ship,” July 24, 1901.
- “Summer Philanthropy in Boston and Plans of the Floating Hospital,” May 19, 1902.
- “Cholera Morbus Antidote. Boston Floating Hospital Designated as One of the Experimental Stations,” May 9, 1903.
- “Launched Amid Tooting and Whistling—Boston Floating Hospital Goes into Water at East Boston While a Mighty Cheer Went up with Spectators,” July 7, 1906.
- “Floating Hospital to Continue Work: Boat Not Needed,” July 2, 1928.
Acknowledgments
- Translation and recording thanks to the generosity of the Boston Marine Society.
- Our gratitude to the Perkins School for the Blind and David W. Cook for their partnership in creating the audio files.
- Warm thanks to Daniel Bird, Tufts Medical Center historian, for his assistance.