Milton Joseph Rosenau

Background

Milton Joseph Rosenau was born in Philadelphia, the son of Matilda (Blitz) Rosenau and Nathan Rosenau, a Jewish merchant who emigrated from Bavaria in 1852, settled first in Louisville, Ky. , and then moved to Philadelphia.

Education

Rosenau received his early education in the local public schools, graduating from Central High School. He then entered the University of Pennsylvania and received the M. D. degree in 1889. In 1891 he broadened his knowledge of public health work by studying at the Hygienic Institute in Berlin (1892 - 1893). In 1900 he went abroad for further study at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Pathological Institute in Vienna.

Career

After completing an internship at the Philadelphia General Hospital (1889 - 1890), he became assistant surgeon with the U. S. Marine Hospital Service (now the U. S. Public Health Service). He served as quarantine officer at San Francisco (1895 - 1898) and in Cuba (1898). In 1899 he was appointed director of the Hygienic Laboratory of the U. S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service (which later became the nucleus of the present National Institutes of Health).

The Hygienic Laboratory, established in 1887 as essentially a one-man operation, received official recognition in 1901, when Congress appropriated $35, 000 for the construction of a building to house it. As the research facility of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, the laboratory dealt with problems relating to foreign and interstate quarantine and with the medical inspection of immigrants; thus the service required accurate knowledge of the causes, sources, modes of spread, and means for diagnosis and prevention of major communicable diseases. As the responsibilities of the service increased, the laboratory entered a period of rapid growth; during the ten years of Rosenau's directorship the laboratory developed into a more complex organization with separate divisions of bacteriology, chemistry, pathology, pharmacology, and zoology. When Congress enacted a Biologics Control Law in 1902, a separate division was set up within the laboratory to administer it. The expansion of the laboratory reflected Rosenau's talents as a planner and administrator, as well as his high scientific standards. During these years Rosenau made his most important contributions to basic medical research. In collaboration with John F. Anderson, his successor as director of the laboratory, he pioneered in the study of anaphylaxis, the severe and sometimes fatal reaction that occurs when an animal or a human being sensitized to a foreign substance by ingestion or injection receives this material again in the same or even smaller dosage. He not only discovered that bacterial proteins could sensitize but established the time necessary for the development of sensitization and shock. He publicized the use of the Schick test for determining the degree of immunity to diphtheria and, with Joseph Goldberger, established the official unit for standardization of diphtheria antitoxin. He also carried out investigations on the epidemiology of typhoid fever and acute respiratory infections; yellow fever; malaria; plague; the tubercle bacillus; botulism; and disinfection and disinfectants. He studied the germicidal properties of glycerin and determined what concentration was necessary to prevent bacterial contamination of vaccine virus. Rosenau's studies on milk sanitation were an important factor in procuring a clean, safe milk supply in the United States. In 1906 he gave great impetus to the use of pasteurization by determining what degree of heat was required to kill the more important pathogens in milk and showed that heating to 60 C for twenty minutes would make milk safe without damaging its quality.

He also served as a part-time lecturer on tropical diseases at Georgetown University in Washington, D. C. (1905 - 1909), and taught bacteriology at the Army and Navy Medical School (1904 - 1909). In 1909 Rosenau entered the second major phase of his career when he was appointed Charles Wilder professor of preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he served until his retirement in 1935. His intimate knowledge of public health problems gave him a solid basis on which to build a teaching program and enabled him to illustrate the practical application of theoretical principles. To provide experience, he required each student to study the public health problems of a specific community and to prepare a written report offering suggestions for improvement.

In association with W. T. Sedgwick and George C. Whipple, he was instrumental in establishing in 1913 the first school of public health in the United States, the Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology School for Health Officers. When the joint school was discontinued in 1922 and Harvard created its own school of public health, Rosenau became its professor of epidemiology, a post he held until 1935.

He also served (1914 - 1921) as chief of the Division of Biologic Laboratories of the Massachusetts State Board of Health and as director of the Antitoxin and Vaccine Laboratory. In 1935, at the age of sixty-six, Rosenau retired from his posts at Harvard, and the following year moved to the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, as director of the Division of Public Health and professor of epidemiology in the School of Medicine, where he spent the last ten years of his life developing a school of public health. Rosenau exercised great influence through his publications. His Disinfection and Disinfectants: A Practical Guide for Sanitarians, Health and Quarantine Officers appeared in 1902. In the same year he issued a laboratory manual for students of pathology and bacteriology. He summarized his work on milk sanitation in The Milk Question (1912). His most important book, Preventive Medicine and Hygiene (1913), became the standard text on the subject, was translated into several foreign languages, and went through many editions.

He served as president of several professional organizations, including the Society of American Bacteriologists (1934) and the American Public Health Association (1944). As a Jew, Rosenau was called upon to assist in health problems involving fellow Jews. Following World War I, he served as a consultant to the Joint Distribution Committee and traveled to Europe to observe the health situation of the Jews in Central and Eastern Europe and to recommend the most appropriate course of action to take.

Rosenau was a vigorous man who enjoyed sports; he was an exceptionally good tennis player as well as a competent golfer. At Chapel Hill his garden became one of his prime interests. Dignified in appearance, kindly in manner, he was always ready to go out of his way to help his colleagues and friends. In the spring of 1946 Rosenau suffered a heart attack and died a few weeks later, in Chapel Hill, of a coronary occlusion.

Achievements

• Rosenau's pioneer work in public health was of the greatest importance. His studies on milk sanitation played the crucial role in the campaign to make milk supplies pure and safe in the United States. In the period from the turn of the century to the 1930's an increasing knowledge of microbiology and immunology made possible the prevention of communicable diseases on a large scale, but few competent health officers were available to apply the new knowledge. Through his teaching, his publications, and his creation of the first school of public health, Rosenau made possible an ample supply of professionally trained workers in the field. His most important work was "Preventive Medicine and Hygiene". As an outstanding authority in public health and preventive medicine, Rosenau received many honors. He was awarded the Gold Medal of American Medicine for service to humanity, for 1912-1913; in 1933 he received the Sedgwick Memorial Medal for distinguished service in public health, and in 1935 the Pirquet Gold Medal of the Annual Forum on Allergy.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Study of the Cause of Sudden Death Following the Injection of Horse Serum (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Study of the Cause of Sudden Death Following...)

  • Attempts to Grow the Yellow Fever Parasite, And, the Hereditary Transmission of the Yellow Fever Parasite in the Mosquito (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Attempts to Grow the Yellow Fever Parasite, ...)

  • The Origin of the 1908 Outbreak of Foot-And-Mouth Disease in the United States

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Milk Question - Scholar's Choice Edition

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • All about Milk

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Progress and Problems in Preventive Medicine

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Preventive Medicine And Hygiene - Primary Source Edition

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • Disinfection Against Mosquitoes With Formaldehyd And Sulphur Dioxid...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Disinfection Adn Disinfectants: A Practical Guide for Sanitarians, Health and Quarantine Officers 1902

    (Originally published in 1902. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • On the Origin and Prevalence of Typhoid Fever in the District of Columbia (1907) + (1908). 2 volumes.

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  Tennis, Golf

Connections

On July 16, 1900, Rosenau married Myra F. Frank of Allegheny, Pa. Their three children were William Frank, Milton Joseph, and Bertha Pauline. His wife died in 1930 and on January 13, 1935, he married Maud (Heilner) Tenner, a widow with one son, Leonard P. Tenner.

Father:

Nathan Rosenau

Mother:

Matilda (Blitz) Rosenau

Spouse:

Myra F. Frank

Spouse:

Maud (Heilner) Tenner

Daughter:

Bertha Pauline Rosenau

Son:

Milton Joseph Rosenau

Son:

William Frank Rosenau