A Modern Health Department

Dr. Alvin Klein

Amazing things were happening in the health sciences at the turn of the century- the twentieth century.  Already the connection between sanitary conditions and health outcomes had been well established, and a whole new understanding of disease was emerging from Europe.  The rivalry between France and Germany was reflected in the careers of the two founders of microbiology, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.  Pasteur had found a cure for rabies, and had developed the procedure for making milk safe to drink that bears his name.  Koch had discovered the bacteria that cause anthrax and tuberculosis, and invented the techniques for handling bacteria that are used today.  It was a time of great hope and trust in the sciences for the progress and development of humanity.

This was the milieu in which Dr. Alvin Klein became the Health Officer for the Town of Greenwich in 1908.  Greenwich had had a

The Good Doctor

It was March of 1914, and Greenwich was proud of its new Health Department, which included a state-of-the-art laboratory.  Bacteriology was the cutting edge of science then, the hot topic of the day.  And a young Irishman brought this new science to Greenwich as its first town bacteriologist/laboratory director.  Albert G. Bennett had been educated as a medical doctor at the University of Dublin.  He first worked for the New York City Department of Health upon immigrating to America, and also taught hygiene and sanitation. He had his work cut out for him.

Typical of an American town at the time, Greenwich was ravaged by infectious disease. Every year many cases of measles, polio, smallpox, scarlet fever, and whooping cough were reported, particularly among children,.  Diphtheria was one of these contagious diseases.  Caused by a bacterium, it killed its victims by the

Temples of the Future

Fred Remer had needs.  But in the depths of the Great Depression, the Town of Greenwich was not quick to meet the needs of its laboratory director.  On this particular day in 1938 he was wishing he had an up-to-date analytical balance, to replace the one that had been there since the laboratory opened over two decades before.

Frederick M. Remer had been hired to reopen the laboratory of the Greenwich Department of Health in 1931, in its new location in the Town Hall on Greenwich Avenue, which would one day become

The Skeleton Outline

Health Officer Albert E. Austen MD looked out the window of his office in the Old Town Hall.  He could see the Post Office across the street with its obelisk dedicated “To the Greenwich Men and Women Who Died During the World War”, a war in which he himself had served.  He could see down the slope of Greenwich Avenue, with the tree line of Long Island visible across the Sound in the distance.  It was rush hour, and the avenue was crowded.  Trolley cars made their way up the hill among crowds of people on foot and a swarm of black automobiles, including many Model-T’s and a sprinkling of fancier ones like the Locomobiles made in Bridgeport.  There were even some horse-drawn carts still around.

The practice of public health was becoming more professional and systematic in the 1920s, and Dr. Austen wanted the Greenwich Department of Health to fully participate in this movement.  He had already

A Tragic Pioneer

On a crisp December morning in 1926 the Health Officer strode into the pathology lab of Greenwich Hospital.  Dr. Louise Larrimore was in the middle of transferring the culture collection.  She looked up from the row of media-filled test tubes with sterile cotton plugs, and putting down her bacteriological loop, asked, “May I help you?”

Dr. Austen said, “Dr. Larrimore, as you know, our town bacteriologist died suddenly last month and we are finding it very difficult to find somebody to fill his shoes.  I have come to ask you if you would consider functioning as the bacteriologist and doing the public health laboratory work until we find

The Horrid October

Dr. Frank Terry Brooks faced a dilemma.  He had hoped for a quiet term as interim Health Officer for the Town of Greenwich, filling in until the appointed Health Officer finished his deployment at the front in France during the Great War of 1918. Greenwich was ablaze with patriotic fervor. Besides the young men who went to serve as soldiers, numerous young women received training as nurses to serve overseas as well.  His own wife was trained as a nurse, and rumor had it that he himself had sent her abroad to be educated, and that they had met up in Honolulu and gotten married to avoid his father’s opposition.

His dilemma had to do with disturbing news he had heard from the naval base in New London.  A ship had arrived there last summer carrying returning soldiers who were becoming ill with a series of symptoms never seen before. A sudden onset of chills, fever and pain led to coughing up blood, and lips and faces turning blue from

The Frustrated Health Officer





Dr. Griswold was disgusted.  Shaking his copy of the Greenwich Graphic for October 9, 1886, he muttered “We try to help this community and the first thing we get is public criticism”. 

William L. Griswold, MD was the first Health Officer of the Town of Greenwich, appointed by the Board of Health which itself had been formed as part of a national movement that would come to be called the Great Sanitary Awakening.  This was the time in the latter part of the 19^th century when people first became aware of the connection between sanitation and health, between purity of drinking water and proper disposal of sewage on the one hand and lower