Literature and Medicine I

11Nationally, pasteurization and regulation became a solution for epidemic infant mortality from diarrhea-causing diseases. Nathan Straus became the nation’s leading proponent for pasteurized milk and garnered the attention of leading progressives when in 1897 he reduced deaths by fifty percent at Randall Island Infant Asylum in New York City (Miller). Historian Julie Miller asserted that Straus applied his entrepreneurial skills to promote pasteurization, while Dr. Adelaide Brown focused on milk safety as a public health issue. She built a career campaigning for milk safety, but she opposed pasteurizing milk, asserting “it gave a false sense of security” since at the time the pasteurized product still contained tubercile bacilli and other streptococci. With an initial $250.00 grant from Adolph Sutro (Populist, San Francisco Mayor, 1894-1896), she established the Milk Laboratory in 1894 where cow’s milk was treated to have the approximate chemical make-up of mother’s milk. After Dr. Charlotte Brown’s death in 1904, Dr. Adelaide Brown continued her mother’s momentum as an activist to fight for milk safety in California. She carried forward the medical torch becoming a pioneer in the development of preventative medicine in California.

12Prior to the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was entrenched in political corruption. The former president of the Musicians Union, Eugene E. Schmitz (Labor Union Party, San Francisco Mayor, 1902-1907) with support from working-class neighborhoods fostered an administration filled with graft and corruption. Meanwhile, George H. Pippy (a Progressive Republican) promoted San Francisco as a business-friendly city. Pippy, a corporate attorney, owned the Columbia Dairy. During the early-1880s, with “a horse, a wagon, and divers milk cans procured on credit,” he established the Columbia Dairy, which rapidly grew into a thriving business (San Francisco 302-07). By 1900, the Columbia Dairy was the largest west of Chicago, consisting of extensive delivery routes, with depots located in Oakland and San Francisco that were furnished by milk dealers throughout the San Francisco Bay counties. Pippy worked with the California Promotion Committee to aggressively court German agriculturalists in order to improve the State’s cheese production. In 1905 the California dairy industry earned an estimated $18 million (compared to the $40 million fruit industry), and the state imported $1.5 million in dairy products (Irving 229, 233, 239).

13The earthquake and fire on April 18, 1906 severely damaged the city’s infrastructure. Children’s Hospital suffered “grave damage,” requiring extensive repairs and rebuilding. Adelaide’s brother Dr. Philip King Brown lost nearly everything, but she lived adjacent to the Presidio, and stepped away from her regular work to run the city’s emergency room and to manage logistics for the pool of emergency Red Cross vehicles. 

We had an emergency medical department which Dr. Adelaide Brown ran, and several automobiles were put at our disposal and were used to move the aged or sick to homes or to the ferry. Fresh milk and eggs were brought to us daily, forty to fifty gallons, from a ranch across the bay, for babies and mothers, and also the Army requisitioned a certain amount of food to be sent us for distribution daily. (H. H. Brown 11)

14“Relief and Rehabilitation,” funded the emergency room and emergency hospital care, this served a double purpose of giving relief to the refugees and assisting the hospitals financially. Brown and Pippy shared in interest in milk safety. Pippy, a colonel in the National Guard, was instrumental in securing fresh milk for the refugees, so the Finance Committee sold surplus supplies of potatoes, flour, and milk to raise funds for other emergency needs:

It was natural to think that condensed and evaporated milk would be necessities of prime importance, but on account of local conditions were not needed in great quantities. The supply of milk from the ranches outside the city was not much diminished by the earthquake. By confiscation and by arrangement with dealers, an abundant supply of fresh milk was secured for distribution to the refugees. (O’Brien et al. 101-02)

15The intensity and duration and the ensuing fires destroyed the City’s infrastructure. Gas mains broke, adding fuel to the fire, and roads buckled making transport arteries impassible. All means of telegraphic communications ceased by eight in the morning, when all energy was enlisted for firefighting. Over 3,000 individuals perished and over 300,000 San Franciscans were rendered homeless after fires ravaged the city for three days. It was impossible to purchase supplies for ten days. Homeless refugees built temporary shelters on vacant lots and in parks before tents arrived. Refugees moved westward towards Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, where a makeshift emergency room under Brown’s management was erected.