Simon Baruch

Simon Baruch (July 29, 1840 - June 3, 1921) was a physician, scholar, public benefactor of hydrotherapy in the United States.

Early life and education

At 15 years old, Simon Baruch immigrated from Schwersenz, Prussia, to South Carolina in 1855. He joined the Mannes Baum family, immigrants from Schwersenz five years previous, and worked for them as a bookkeeper. He began his medical education around 1860, attending South Carolina Medical College and the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) in Richmond, Virginia, later renamed Virginia Commonwealth University. Simon received a medical degree in early 1862.[1][2] Dr. Baruch began his medical career as a surgeon in the Confederate army; entering the service reportedly “without even having lanced a boil.” Dr. Baruch first accepted a commission as Assistant Surgeon of the 3rd South Carolina Battalion on April 4, 1964, and in August of that year, transferred to the 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, appointed Surgeon. However, during the Civil War, Dr. Baruch obtained considerable surgical experience. After the Confederate surrender at Gettysubrg in July 1863, he stayed on to treat the wounded for six weeks. He was then imprisoned at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, and returned to his unit in December. After a period of ill health, he returned to the 13th Mississippi Regiment the following summer, and continued serving until the end of the war.[3][4][5]

Dr. Baruch remained in the South during the Reconstruction Era. He wrote a widely-read pamphlet on "Bayonet Wounds." However, in 1865, before marrying Isabelle "Belle" Wolfe (1850-1921), a niece of Mannes Baum, Dr. Baruch went to New York City to seek his fortune. For one year he worked as a dispensary physician in the Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan district, a bastion of poor and working-class people. There, Dr. Baruch saw firsthand many patients sick with communicable diseases and lacking access to clean bath water, fresh air, and sunshine. A year later, Dr. Baruch returned to Camden and married in 1867. For the next 16-years, Dr. Baruch practiced medicine in South Carolina. He also advocated for the smallpox vaccination for the children of the state, helped to reactivate and served as president of the South Carolina State Medical Association, and he held positions on the faculty of the state medical college and chairman of the South Carolina Board of Health, later renamed the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. [6] Growing increasingly dissatisfied with the indiscriminate use of unproven medical remedies. Dr. Baruch studied the healing philosophies of Austrian physician, Vincent Priessnitz (1799-1852), who had established a successful therapeutic spa in the Silesian Mountains. Dr. Preissnitz developed remedies largely predicated upon water, including frequent bathing and irrigating the gastrointestinal tract. Patients recuperated in a restful, calm environment, ate a prudent diet, eliminated alcohol and tobacco, and engaged in physical activity. This alternative form of medicine was called hydrotherapy. [7]

Medical career

Report on public baths and public comfort stations by the Mayor's committee of New York City (1897) (14591088910)
Asser Levy Recreation Center

In 1881, Dr. Baruch, his wife Belle, and their four sons, Hartwig ("Harty") Nathaniel (1868-1953), Bernard Mannes (1870-1965), Herman Benjamin (1872-19530, and Sailing Wolfe, took up residence in New York. He is best known as a nineteenth-century public health advocate and a medical writer. Dr. Baruch also performed one of the earliest appendectomy surgeries in the United States, studied and introduced the US to medicinal springs therapies (balneology). In 1888, Dr. Baruch the consulting physician in a widely publicized “child cruelty” case involving musical prodigy Josef Hofmann. [8][9][10][11]

Dr. Baruch was a physician and scholar with an enduring focus on the methodical management of chronic diseases. [12] Dr. Baruch was a tireless advocate for free public baths in New York City, during a period in American history when immigrants flooded the cities. After studying hydrotherapy, and the uses of water to prevent infection, Dr. Baruch worked tirelessly to educate public officials about the relationship of water to health. [13] However, in New York City the public was skeptical about the debilitating effects of poor sanitation. A pessimistic Mayor Hugh J. Grant (1852-1910) stated, "The people won't bathe." Despite opposition, Dr. Baruch worked to convince three successive Mayors about the utility of water to health, and in particular, the importance of a free public bath system for working class New Yorkers. [14] He reported about the structure and functioning of a public bath systems and its benefits to the Committee on Hygiene in New York in his role as Chairman. Dr. Baruch also authored several scholarly publications on the subject, including "The Uses of Water in Modern Medicine" (1892), "Therapeutic reflections: a plea for physiological remedies" (1893), and "The Principles and Practice of Hydrotherapy" (1898). [15][16][17] Dr. Baruch advocated for the uses of water in modern medicine in newspaper editorials, scholarly articles, and addresses to professional medical and scientific societies. He published the first article in America on the utility of public baths in the Philadelphia Medical Times and Register, a medical journal, on August 24, 1889. [18][19][20][21]

Although Dr. Baruch continued to meet with resistance, he secured legislation in 1895 from the local health boards to construct a public baths facility in New York City. [22] In 1901, Dr. Baruch and his colleagues Health Commissioner Fowler and Dr. Van Sandvoord saw the establishment of The Rivington Street Public Baths, followed by the Asser Levy Public Baths (1904-06), now part of the Asser Levy Recreation Center, a historic landmark located at the corner of Asser Levy Place and East 23rd Street in Kips Bay. In 1912, Dr. Baruch was appointed founding president of the American Association for Promoting Hygiene and Public Baths, a position he held until his death. [23]

In 1907, Baruch was appointed professor of hydrotherapy at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, but he resigned in 1913, when hydrotherapy became an elective subject. In 1910, Baruch wrote "Lessons of half a century in medicine." [24] As medical editor of the New York Sun, from 1912 to 1918, Baruch covered major health concerns of the period. Baruch authored "Epitome of hydrotherapy for physicians, architects and nurses," in 1920. [25] Dr. Baruch stated that he had "done more to save life and prevent the spread of disease in my work for public baths than in all...work as a physician." [26]

Family

Simon Baruch married Isabelle ("Belle") Wolfe of Winnsboro, SC, in 1867. They had four sons. Bernard M. Baruch went on to a profitable career on Wall Street, and was a financial advisor to US Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman. Bernard Baruch's vast fortune afforded him the opportunity to donate and endow university chairs, medical facilities, and public facilities, many in his father’s name. Herman B. Baruch followed in the footsteps of his father to become a physician and also a diplomat. Hartwig Baruch was an actor. Sailing Baruch was a banker and stockbroker. [27]

Legacy

Simon Baruch is honored by civil monument in New York City, many established by his son Bernard M. Baruch, including Simon Baruch Houses public housing project as well as buildings, halls, and chairs at Columbia University, Clemson University, New York University College of Medicine, and the Medical College of Virginia/VCU. New York City Department of Education's Middle School 104 is named Simon Baruch Middle School, along with its namesake garden and playground. [28][29]

In 1933, the Simon Baruch Research Institute of Baleneology at Saratoga Springs Spa, Saratoga Springs, New York was established. [30]

In 1940, the Simon Baruch Auditorium building was added to the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation was funded, and the campus Egyptian Building was later renovated, by Bernard M. Baruch, in honor of his father, Simon Baruch. [31][32]

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "VCU Health : Physician Medicine and Rehabilitation". Virginia Commonwealth University. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
  2. ↑ Baruch, Simon. "Simon Baruch papers, 1860-1869". Medical College of South Carolina. OCLC 123402138.
  3. ↑ Baruch, Simon. "Reminiscences of a Confederate surgeon". Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America: 8. OCLC 29204113.
  4. ↑ Guelzo, Allen (2014). Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (Reprint ed.). New York, NY: Vintage Civil War Library. p. 469. ISBN 978-0307740694. Retrieved 30 December 2014.
  5. ↑ "Bernard Baruch's Father Dies In N. Y.". New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-19. Dr. Simon Baruch, noted physician and father of Bernard M. Baruch, financier died at 1:10 this afternoon from an of the lungs complicated by heart disease.
  6. ↑ "Simon Baruch papers, 1860-1869". Emory Libraries and Information Technologies. Emory University Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
  7. ↑ Hellebrandt, Francis A. (1950). "Simon Baruch, father of hydrotherapy in America; evolution of his interest in hydrotherapy". Richmond, VA: Baruch Center of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Medical College of Virginia: 16 leaves. OCLC 14673795.
  8. ↑ Spain Ward, Patricia (1990). Simon Baruch: Rebel in the Ranks of Medicine, 1840-1921 (1st Edition ed.). University Alabama Press. p. 416. ISBN 0817305890.
  9. ↑ BARUCH, SIMON jewish encyclopedia.com, English, accessed on 15th July 2010
  10. ↑ Smith, Debra (2012). Young Heroes of the Confederacy. p. 128. ISBN 1455616842.
  11. ↑ Frederick Shrady, George; Lathrop Stedman, Thomas, eds. (February 25, 1888). "The Overworked Pianist". The Medical Record (New York: W. Wood) 33: 221. OCLC 1757009.
  12. ↑ Baruch, Simon. "The Successful Treatment of Chronic Diseases: A Plea for Their More Methodical Management". Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York from 1832 to 1857 (New York: Medical Society of the State of New York). OCLC 301043396.
  13. ↑ Baruch, Simon (1884). "The prevention of puerperal infection : a study of antiseptic practice in the maternity hospitals of Paris, Prague, Berlin, Parma, Glasgow, Copenhagen, and New York". New York: The New York Medical Journal: 23 pages 19 cm (8vo). OCLC 78351595.
  14. ↑ Baruch, Simon (April 25, 1896). "Hydrotherapy in typhoid fever". Medical News (Philadelphia, Penn.: Henry C. Lea's Sons): 9 pages ; 21 cm. OCLC 231050042.
  15. ↑ Baruch, Simon (1893). "The uses of water in modern medicine": 2 v. : pl., diagr. ; 19 cm. OCLC 41251331.
  16. ↑ Baruch, Simon (1898). "The principles and practice of hydrotherapy : a guide to the application of water in disease for students and practitioners of medicine". New York: William Wood and Company: xii, 544 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. OCLC 28801729.
  17. ↑ Baruch, Simon (1891). "A plea for public baths : together with an inexpensive method for their hygienic utilization". Dietetic Gazette: 45 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm. OCLC 45448437.
  18. ↑ "A bold arraignment of the medical profession : for the practice of false theories, false pretenses, fraudulent claims for a false science, and for their determined purpose to oppose the cold bath in all fevers : and for publishing to the people that it is not beneficial, but hurtful, all for the purpose of deluding the people into employing them to treat the sick with their fraudulent science and to let them die : with the papers attached of Drs. Simon Baruch and G.C. Smythe, read before their respective medical societies, on the treatment of typhoid fever with cold water". Indianapolis, Ind.: Indianapolis Printing Co. 1890: xlvxii, 361 pages : portrait ; 19 cm. OCLC 14798873.
  19. ↑ Baruch, Simon (1892). "The uses of water in modern medicine". Detroit, Michigan: George S. Davis: 2 volumes in 1 (xv, 115; viii, 228, viii, [4] pages) : illustrations ; 19 cm. OCLC 2823790.
  20. ↑ Baruch, Simon; The New York Academy of Medicine (1893). "Therapeutic reflections : a plea for physiological remedies". The Journal of Balneology (New York: Stettiner, Lambert & Co.): 11 pages ; 26 cm. OCLC 6332921.
  21. ↑ Baruch, Simon (1899). "The Evolution of Modern Therapy : An address read before the Society of the Alumni of the Medical College of Virginia". Detroit, Michigan: W.M. Warren: 46 pages ; 20 cm. OCLC 271111250.
  22. ↑ New York Board of Alderman. "Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen" II. The Board 1835 -: 3. OCLC 22091780.
  23. ↑ Keys, Thomas E.; Krusen, Frank H. (1945). "Dr. Simon Baruch and his fight for free public baths". Archives of Physical Medicine XXVI: 9 pages : illustrations, portrait ; 24 cm. OCLC 12741233.
  24. ↑ Baruch, Simon (1910). "Lessons of half a century in medicine". Old Dominion Journal of Medicine and Surgery (Richmond: Old Dominion Pub. Corp.). vol. XI, no. 1, July, 1910: 24. OCLC 6495397.
  25. ↑ Baruch, Simon (1920). "An epitome of hydrotherapy for physicians, architects and nurses". Philadelphia and London: W.B. Saunders: 2 preliminary leaves, 11–205 pages illustrations. OCLC 894230871.
  26. ↑ Williams, Marilyn (1991). Washing 'the great unwashed' : public baths in urban America. Ohio State University Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 0-8142-0537-2.
  27. ↑ "Dr. Simon Baruch. Long Ill, Dies at 80". www.nytimes.com. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 30 December 2014.
  28. ↑ A SHORT HISTORY OF SIMON BARUCH MIDDLE SCHOOL on schools.nyc.gov, retrieved on 15 July 2010
  29. ↑ Baruch Playground to nycgovparks.org, retrieved on 15 July 2010
  30. ↑ Joel A., DeLisa; Bruce M., Gans (2005). Physical medicine and rehabilitation : principles and practice. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 2 volumes (xvi, 1926, I48 pages) : illustrations ; 29 cm. ISBN 0781741300.
  31. ↑ Hoffius, Susan Dick; Fox, E. Brooke (2011). The Medical University of South Carolina (Campus History). Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing. pp. 127 pages : illustrations, portraits. ISBN 0738579963.
  32. ↑ Cifu, MD, David X. "Physician Medicine and Rehabilitation : About Us". Virginia Commonwealth University. Retrieved 22 April 2016.

External links


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