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Clarkson students learning about history of public health at first lab built for tuberculosis research in U.S.

Posted 2/23/15

POTSDAM -- Students in the Clarkson Trudeau Biomedical Scholars Program are learning about the history of public health at the first lab built for tuberculosis research in the United States. The …

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Clarkson students learning about history of public health at first lab built for tuberculosis research in U.S.

Posted

POTSDAM -- Students in the Clarkson Trudeau Biomedical Scholars Program are learning about the history of public health at the first lab built for tuberculosis research in the United States.

The Trudeau Institute, Saranac Lake, is home to the treatment and research center founded in the late 1800s by Edward Livingston Trudeau. Clarkson University Associate Professor of History Laura Ettinger said Trudeau's lab was the first for tuberculosis research in the United States, so the facilities have played a central role in the history of public health in America.

As part of Ettinger’s history course, students are working with Amy Catania, executive director of Historic Saranac Lake at the Saranac Laboratory Museum, on a new exhibit on the history of tuberculosis research and treatment. Students in the class also had the opportunity to work with Michele Tucker, curator of the Adirondack Research Room at the Saranac Lake Free Library, to do primary source research on the history of tuberculosis, and to visit "cure cottages," where patients once received treatment for tuberculosis.

"We're located in such an important place for the history of public health," Ettinger said. "There's nothing more valuable than hands-on work to make history come alive."

The new, three-week course also covers issues such as the controversies surrounding inoculations -- the precursor to vaccinations -- and how sick individuals were isolated during a typhoid outbreak. Ettinger said these lessons on individual liberties versus the public health mirror contemporary issues such as the recent measles outbreak and vaccine debate.

"The reason we study history is that it matters today, and it can inform decisions that we make related to public health issues," she said.

History of Public Health in America is one of five courses students will take over throughout their semester at the Trudeau Institute.