Lucius Polk Brown was a professional chemist who became a bureaucrat in the field of public health during the Progressive era, when middle-class reformers first attempted to order American society through integrated systems. In his native state of Tennessee, between 1908 and 1915 Brown created a public health enforcement agency, began educating the masses to public health needs, waged flamboyant campaigns against those who violated the laws, and attracted widespread support for pure food and drug control. Moving on to become director of the Bureau of Food and Drugs in the New York City Department of Health in 1915, he continued his battle for public health reform amidst the maze of government agencies and political power struggles surrounding Tammany Hall. In Many respects Brown was typical of Progressive reformers. A middle-class, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and a professional, he represented a link between the nineteenth-century agrarian and the twentieth-century urbanite. More importantly, Brown exemplified a new character on the American scene: a scientist out of the agricultural-experiment-station mold entering public life, ready to challenge politicians on their own ground. This book contains fresh insights on the history of the public health movement in America, one area of reform that has not received the attention it deserves. Except for incidental references, the major figures of food and drug regulation at the local level have been largely ignored by historians. Lucius Polk Brown's quest for pure food and drugs is representative of what municipal and state officials, as scientific people, encountered when they fought for the passage of new laws, struggled to enforce existing ones, and battled with the politicians, quacks, ignorance that threatened their efforts. Brown's diversified career provides a unique opportunity for studying a scientific reformer caught up in the political turmoil of the Progressive era. His experience in government service spanned twelve years and touched on two dissimilar political systems. In focusing on Brown's struggles, achievements, and failures, Margaret Ripley Wolfe provides a comparative study of state and municipal health administrations, of bureaucratic development in a rural southern state and a northern metropolis. For that reason this book should be of interest to political scientists and public health officials as well as to social historians and students of the Progressive era.
Margaret Ripley Wolfe retired as professor of history at East Tennessee State University, Kingsport Center, in 2004. She is the author or coauthor of several books, including Daughters of Canaan: A Saga of Southern Women and Kingsport, Tennessee: A Planned American City.
"Wolfe's biography of Brown is an admirable detailing of the procedures and perplexities of early food and drug regulation at the municipal and state levels, strata not thoroughly explored heretofore."--Journal of the History of Medicine "In short, this both an instructive and a disturbing study, casting a baleful light upon the pragmatic realities within which an idealistic and highly talented public servant pursued a destiny far less fulfilling than he deserved, while some of his politically motivated detractors, such as Royal S. Copeland of New York, went on to highly rewarding positions in such bodies as the United States Senate. It is a story worth pondering and its author has told it well."--Journal of Southern History "Wolfe effectively shows how the emerging scientific professionals helped create effective government bureaus under professional management only to have them fall into the hands of another breed of professionals, the full-time politicians. In demonstrating this, Wolfe, has done an excellent analysis of the political situation in both Tennessee and New York City."--Journal of American History "This nicely written study provides a glimpse at food and drug control in Tennessee and New York."--Bulletin of the History of Medicine "The book is a valuable case study of the efforts of one scientific expert working to effect sanitary and marketing reforms within the framework of state and big city politics in the progressive period."--Choice "A needed work."--Pharmacy in History "This book is a very significant and useful contribution to the history of public health in the United States."--George Rosen, M.D., Professor of the History of Medicine, and Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University "In describing Lucius Polk Brown's career, Margaret Ripley Wolfe presents a case example of how the crusade for effective regulation of the American food and drug supply during the Progressive era developed on the state and municipal levels. As a study of a major figure in food and drug regulation at the local level, this book pioneers in meeting an important historiographical need. It contributes not only to food and drug history, and the history of the Progressive period."--James Harvey Young, Professor of History, Emory University
