Iowa Heritage Illustrated

Swaim, Ginalie

Salubrious or Unsanitary Iowa? The Struggle for the Public's Health

Eckoff, Ronald D

The Core of Public Health
Vital Records and Statistics
by Ronald D. Eckoff
ollecting vital records was one of the major re­
sponsibilities—and challenges—of the State 
Board of Health when it was established in 1880. 
Vital records (births, deaths, and marriages) would be 
tabulated and analyzed to identify problems and assess the 
effectiveness of sanitary and other preventive measures.
Some counties had started registering births in 1867 
on the local level. But these reports tended to be incom­
plete and erratic, as were the local records submitted to 
the State Board of Health after 1880.
In the first years, many local health authorities did 
not report to the board. A Charles City doctor found 
the board's list of questions "exhaustive" and answered 
only a few. When compared to census figures, it was 
clear that only half of the Iowa deaths in 1880-1881 were 
reported to the State Board of Health. But eager to ana­
lyze the available numbers, and after an enormous 
amount of hand tabulation, the board published nearly 
700 pages of tables and statistics in 1883. Because of 
uneven compliance, the statistics provided only a lim­
ited understanding of the prevailing fatal diseases in 
the state.
Optimistically, the Board of Health anticipated that 
reporting would rapidly improve with a little time and 
education. The board's 1917 quarterly bulletin reminded 
readers that birth certificates, which the Board of Health 
provided, were often needed for individuals to prove 
age, citizenship, and the rights to vote, hold public of­
fice, and inherit property. However, collecting records 
continued to be relatively unsatisfactory until the Iowa 
legislature passed the U.S. Census Bureau's Vital 
Records Model Registration Act in 1921.
• +*
A
s World War II approached, the demand for 
birth certificates exploded. In June 1940, the De­
partment of Health employed 13 people to 
search records and make certified copies of birth cer­
tificates. Within six weeks, the staff was doubled. These 
26 people were divided into three eight-hour shifts, pro­
viding proof of citizenship for all people who were born 
in Iowa. Meanwhile, the night shift worked on index­
ing the records from 1880 to 1921. The workload con­
tinued to increase until Pearl Harbor, when it tripled 
overnight. Many Iowans found they needed a birth cer­
tificate, including those who wanted to work in the war 
industries. Within two weeks, the incoming mail rose 
from 3,000 letters per week to 10,000. The staff of the 
Vital Statistics Section expanded to 100.
Working in the State Medical Library, Jeannette 
Dean-Throckmorton received a request in August 1941 
from an Indianola woman whose daughter Nina now 
needed a birth certificate. Dean-Throckmorton, who 
may have delivered Nina in her early years as a coun­
try doctor in Chariton, sent the mother a sworn affida­
vit and instructed her to take it, "together with any 
newspaper clippings, school cards, Cradle Roll of your 
Church, Baby Book, etc. and go to the Courthouse in 
Indianola where they will tell you what to do to get a 
sworn birth certificate."
Dean-Throckmorton couldn't resist expressing her 
opinion (no doubt the opinion of many who worked in 
Vital Records) that "if the State of Iowa had had a law 
for birth registration thirty years ago, all this trouble 
and expense for you and for me would have been 
avoided."
The responsibilities and scope of activities of the 
Iowa Department of Public Health have expanded 
manyfold over the past 125 years. However, vital records 
and statistics continue to be the core of public health, 
allowing the department to distill from massive 
amounts of data the course of diseases and the effec­
tiveness of health measures. ❖
Ronald D. Eckoff retired in 2002 after 36 years at the Iowa De­
partment of Public Health. He served as a division director, di­
vision medical director, and twice as acting department director. 
He is preparing a history of the Iowa State Board of Health/Iowa 
Department of Public Health and local public health in Iowa. 
Anyone with information or suggestions may contact him at 
Ronald D. Eckoff, 12534 S1V Maffitt Lake Drive, Camming, 
Iowa 50061, or by e-mail: reckoff@radiks.net.
Summer 2005 79
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“ During World War I, 1918 was a bad year of the flu. [A t the 
University of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City] we lost five striped 
nurses and three white nurses, eight nurses altogether. . . . 
They brought students over and it seemed like the poor boys 
just died like flies.The hospital that was built for contagious 
diseases hadn’t been opened, it was brand new. When the flu 
broke out they brought the students over and put them on 
the top floor thinking that would be safer up there from 
everybody else. It wasn’t very long until the whole building 
was full.They’d bring them in the afternoon and maybe they’d 
be gone by morning. It just seemed to take them in no time."
— Bess Burrows
“ It was terrible out there [at Camp Dodge in Des Moines]. 
That was one of the reasons why we were held up and they 
didn’t send us overseas was because the flu was so terrible 
they were dying out there two or three hundred a day. They 
were hauling them in dray wagons down to the embalming 
station. They didn’t have anything to put them in. They just 
wrapped them up in Army blankets and stacked them in the 
wagons, hauled them down to the mortuary where they put 
the bodies in rough boxes. They stacked the rough boxes 
outdoors. Oh, there was a row three wide, and about fifteen 
or sixteen long, and about eight or ten high.’’
— Claude Davis
80 Iowa Heritage Illustrated


English

The Core of Public Health: Vital Records and Statistics

Schoen, Christopher M

A Point of Land 
and Prehistoric Peoples
Prehistoric artifacts found near the confluence of the Raccoon and 
Des Moines rivers, in central Iowa, remind us that Euro-Americans 
—  explorers,traders, trappers, soldiers, and settlers— were 
the first to find  this point an advantageous location.
by Christopher M. Schoen
This T-shaped drill (about twice actual 
size) was found amidst chipped flakes 
of stone.
ARTIFACT PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY LOUIS BERGER GROUP. INC
H ow long and how frequently prehistoric peoples had 
visited this location—where the 
Raccoon River flows into the Des 
Moines—is unknown, but some­
time between 8500 and 800 B.C., 
during the Archaic Period, a small 
group of people came to this point 
of land for a short period. On the 
highest spot of the point one 
individual looked out over the 
river valleys while he chipped 
flakes off a cobble of flint-like 
rock, used to make and sharpen 
tools such as projectile points to 
hunt game, knives to skin and cut 
up game or shape wood and bone, 
and drills (see left) to bore holes in 
wood, bone, and shell. The cobble 
of Winterset chert was collected 
from the riverbed or perhaps from 
a bedrock outcrop in the region.
He left behind a pile of the 
chipped material, which eventu­
ally became buried by soil accu­
mulating over the spot.
About 1100 A.D., near the end 
of the Late Woodland Period, large 
groups of prehistoric people began 
to settle in the central Des Moines
valley (in present-day Marion, 
Polk, and Warren counties). These 
people, who were part of a 
widespread culture archaeologists 
have called Oneota, have been 
attributed to the Moingona phase 
based on patterns of pottery 
decoration and other characteristics.
One group of related families 
selected the point of land at the 
two rivers as the site to stav for anj
undetermined period around 1300 
A.D. Because the point was at the 
interface of a woodland along the 
rivers and prairie, the resourceful 
Moingona community could take 
advantage of the varied wildlife 
and materials each vegetal and 
topographical niche offered. The 
site was protected from spring 
flooding and away from mosqui­
toes. The point was high enough 
that breezes brought temporary 
relief from the heat of the warm 
season and gnats and flies. The 
group erected small to moderate­
sized structures of poles covered 
with mats or bark, and dug a few 
pits to store foodstuffs and other 
materials. From the bottomlands,
8 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
«
they collected wood for fuel and 
for building materials, as well as 
clay and mussel shell to make 
their pottery (above). The group 
may have been there over much of 
the year. They hunted deer and 
bison nearby and butchered them 
on site. The teeth, feet, and ankle- 
bones were disposed of in a trash 
midden. Ducks, soft-shelled 
turtles, fish, muskrats, and beaver 
were captured in the rivers or at 
nearby wetlands. The bones of the 
larger mammals were broken to 
get at the marrow. The Moingona 
group harvested corn, sunflower 
seeds, little barley, and goosefoot 
from cultivated fields located on 
the floodplain. Wild goosefoot and 
dock, both seed plants, were 
gathered for food. Acorns, hickory 
nuts, mulberries, grapes, wild 
strawberries, edible mushrooms, 
and other wild foods undoubtedly 
were collected as well.
A rchaeologists are still trying to clarify the relationships of 
late prehistoric groups and the 
Native American tribes who 
occupied the prairie lands that 
eventually became Iowa. The Ioway, 
Otoe, and Missouria were the first 
tribes documented by explorers, 
traders, colonizers, and soldiers in 
the region. The Ioway, Otoe, and 
Missouria were gradually dis­
placed by the closely allied Sauk 
and Meskwaki in southeastern 
and central Iowa during the 1700s. 
In 1735, members of the latter two 
tribes established a village for a 
few years on an island in the Des 
Moines River a few miles north of 
the confluence with the Raccoon 
River. The Sauk and Meskwaki 
continued to traverse the Des 
Moines area to hunt, fish, trap for 
furs, and raid the Dakota until 1845. 
1 hey established villages a few 
miles from the point in 1842. ♦>
Above: Sherds from the rim and body 
of clay vessels, with typical Oneota deco­
rative patterns of crossed lines and con­
centric circles. Below: The projectile 
point was probably attached to an a r ­
row shaft and used by people of the 
Oneota  culture.
Adapted from introduction by Christopher M. 
Schoen to "Archaeological Date Recovery for the 
SW 2nd to StV 7th Streets Segment of the Martin 
Luther King, Jr. Parkway, Des Moines, Polk 
County, Iowa" (May 2003), prepared for the City 
of Des Moines by the Louis Berger Group, Inc.
Spring 2005 9


A Point of Land and Prehistoric Peoples

Frana, Philip L

Battling Smallpox: State and Local Boards of Health

HAVE YOU A RIGHT
to go to the marriage altar demanding 
honor and purity in the girl you 
marry, unless you are willing
to oiler her
A Clean Lile?
War Opens Up 
VD Discussion
by Ginalie Swaim
A
s the U.S. government geared up to fight the 
Hun, it also geared up to fight venereal dis­
ease. Starting in April 1917, the Wasserman 
blood test for syphilis was required of Iowans entering 
military service. The next year, two issues of the State 
Board of Health's Health Bulletin were devoted to VD, 
which, it reported, was on the rise in Des Moines and 
other Iowa cities. The bulletin spelled out what was ex­
pected. Health authorities must report all cases. Phar­
macists selling VD drugs or compounds must make 
weekly reports of each customer's name, address, and 
sex to local health authorities. Those infected must re­
strict themselves from numerous kinds of contact. 
Blame was placed on prostitution. The bulletins made 
it clear that VD should not be considered a military 
problem but a civilian problem to be addressed in ev­
ery Iowa community. In 1919, the State Board of Health 
received its first federal funds when the state passed a 
VD control act. Free clinics were set up in 12 cities. Edu­
cational materials directed to men and boys were placed 
in barbershops; small posters (see examples, this page) 
appeared in the Health Bulletin; an exhibit was set up at 
the state fair; and boys were reached via school lectures, 
film strips, pamphlets, and charts.
That same year, Jeannette Dean-Throckmorton 
joined the battle. Through a cooperative position with 
the United States Public Health Service, former physi­
cian Dean-Throckmorton became a State Board of Health 
lecturer. In three years, she delivered more than a thou­
sand lectures on "social hygiene" to 185,000 women and 
girls—high school and college students, women's clubs, 
parent-teacher associations, and women in industry, busi­
ness, and teaching.
Dean-Throckmorton's message was that VD "may 
attack [a mother] directly and ruin her health, wreck 
her happiness, rob her of the power to have children, or 
give her children that are blind, crippled or half-witted." 
Seldom had there been significant public discussion 
about syphilis, even though New York physician Prince 
Morrow had claimed in 1904 that one out of every seven 
marriages was childless because of VD.
Although Dean-Throckmorton maintained that sex 
education should also be taught in schools by trained 
teachers or motion pictures, mothers must stamp out 
children's vulgar and immoral thoughts and answer 
their questions frankly. "Women are the builders of the 
home and they naturally can touch upon sex matters 
with boys and girls with much better success than can 
men." "The majority of girls in this state receive no home 
instruction of any kind whatever on sex matters. It is 
doubtless the same with boys," she complained, deter­
mined to safeguard Iowa's youth during "the trying 
years of adolescence." ♦>
78 Iowa Heritage IIIustra ted


War Opens Up VD Discussion

Howell, J M

An Iowa Christmas Sampler

Smith, Mark

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Walter Enoch Heston
Lucas County Farm Boy
and
World-Renowned Cancer Researcher
by Mark Smith
M
y great-grandparents'
farmhouse (above) now 
sits empty. It was in this 
house in Lucas County, near the 
Clarke County line and the little 
town of Woodburn, that my great- 
uncle, Walter Enoch Heston, was 
born on August 23, 1909. Sixty-six 
years later, on December 31, 1975, 
he retired as Chief of the Laboratory 
of Biology of the National Cancer 
Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. His 
contributions to the understanding 
of the onset, course, and interven­
tions of cancerous diseases im­
proved the lives of millions.
Although not the first geneticist 
to be part of cancer research, he was 
the mammalian geneticist who es­
tablished a relationship between 
specific genes and the occurrences
of certain cancers. His long-term 
work with colonies of inbred mice 
vastly improved our knowledge of 
the genetic factors in cancer. Some­
where along the way, he had time 
to take an interest in me.
Walter was the ninth of eleven 
children born to Rosanna and G. L. 
Heston. As a young man, G. L. had 
run away from home in Ohio be­
cause his father had ordered that his 
sons become physicians and his 
daughter, a nurse. G. L., who 
wanted to farm, rebelled. He settled 
in Iowa near extended family and 
set about marrying, raising a fam­
ily, and farming. Ironically, G. L. or­
dered that each of his six sons be­
come farmers and that his five 
daughters become farm women.
Walter was 15 when G. L. died.
At the funeral, Walter's mother 
turned to him and said, "Now you 
will get the education you always 
wanted."
Early on, Walter Heston showed 
two innate qualities of a scientist— 
he was curious and observant. Once 
in his youth, he found a crow's nest 
and carefully removed the eggs, one 
by one, marveling at the anomalies 
of each. Then he diligently recorded 
how many times the bird returned 
to lay a replacement egg.
At age 16, a year after his father 
died, Heston was honored as the top 
student in Lucas County in 1925. He
L •
Iowa scientist Walter Heston, in I 972.
146 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
L
obtained a teaching certificate but 
couldn't teach for two years becauseJ
18 was the minimum age. After 
working on his mother's farm for 
a year, he sought more education.
Because medical school was too 
expensive, he chose instead to study 
mathematics at Iowa State College. 
"Economics have driven many of 
the decisions of mv life," he laterJ
said. To earn money, he taught in a 
rural school and lived on Iowa 
State's dairy farm, where he milked 
cows morning and night. He was 
often too tired to study; if he didn't 
take notes or take homework to 
class, he rationalized that "at least I 
could take my brains."
At Iowa State, Walter loved the 
lectures in embryology by Joseph E. 
Guthrie, who used modeling clay to 
illustrate the complexities of blood 
vessels. Another professor, W. V. 
Lambert, introduced Heston to ge­
netics. Under Lambert's tutelage, he 
explored the phenomenon of 
webbed toes, a condition existing in 
Heston's family. In 1932 he pub­
lished his first research, on the in­
heritance of webbed toes, and 
graduated with a degree in zoology
His next stop was Michigan 
State College for graduate studies in 
genetics, supported by a teaching 
assistantship (again driven by eco­
nomics). There he studied under 
Harrison R. Hunt, who had a repu­
tation for training excellent medical 
researchers. He earned his master's 
degree in genetics in 1934 and in 
1936 he was the first Ph.D. gradu­
ate in zoology from Michigan State.
Heston secured a position as 
professor of biology and head of the 
department at McMurry College in 
Abilene, Texas. Guthrie's modeling- 
clay illustrations at Iowa State soon 
became part of Heston's lectures at 
McMurrv, and area science teachers 
flocked to his summer school in the 
Sacramento Mountains of New 
Mexico, where stepping a dozen
Walter Enoch Heston, circa 1912, sits on his father’s lap (far left). One of eleven 
children raised on the Heston family farm, he became a leading cancer researcher.
yards in any direction practically 
placed you in a different ecosystem.
Heston was fortunate to find a 
job during the Great Depression; 
McMurry College was one of the 
hundreds of small, denominational 
colleges beset by the hard economic 
times. It was difficult to maintain 
optimism as unemployment rose, 
crops failed, and commodity prices 
plummeted. Fortunately, one of the 
national problems that was being 
addressed during the Depression 
was cancer.
T
hrough the centuries, cancer 
had been one of the ultimate 
fears in life. A diagnosis meant 
the loss of hope. It meant that a si­
lent and deadly killer had moved 
into your body and was quietly tak­
ing away the healthy functioning of 
an organ. When you noticed the 
lump or the lesion that would not 
heal, or felt a mysterious pain, it was
usuallv too late. Treatments were 
painful, experimental, and often ex­
pensive and far from home. In most 
instances, you faced a slow, ago­
nizing death. Mostly, you hoped 
and prayed that this disease would 
pass you by or, if it didn't, that you 
would die quickly. You hoped your 
spouse would remarry or that rela­
tives could raise your children. Af­
ter receiving a cancer diagnosis, 
many an Iowa farmer went hunting 
and was found dead from a gun ac­
cident, and many cancerous Iowa 
women accidentallv had the gas on 
when they cleaned the oven.
It was in this context that the 
United States Congress passed an 
act establishing the National Can­
cer Institute on August 5,1937. For 
the first time in American history, 
there was going to be a government- 
sponsored, coordinated, and sys­
tematic approach to cancer research 
and treatment. One of the six scien­
tists appointed by the U.S. Surgeon 
General to lead the nation's research
Winter 2005 147
on cancer was Clarence C. Little.
"C. C. Little was the biggest 
man I ever knew/' Heston recalled. 
Harvard-trained, Little had co­
founded the American Birth Control 
League, served as president of two 
universities, was the managing di­
rector of the Women's Field Army 
(later reorganized as the American 
Cancer Society), and built up the 
Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Labo­
ratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. The 
laboratory would receive one of the 
first grants from the National Can­
cer Institute and would become a 
leading supplier of inbred mice for 
research. Little believed in a genetic 
link to cancer, and through Harrison 
Hunt at Michigan State, he learned 
of a well-trained genetics researcher 
teaching biology in Texas—Walter 
Heston. Heston was selected as a 
research fellow.
Because there was not yet a 
home for the National Cancer Insti­
tute, research fellows were "farmed 
out" to various U.S. laboratories. 
Heston and his wife, Vivian, left 
Texas for Maine to work at the Jack- 
son Laboratory, which Little di­
rected. The Hestons' three sons, 
David, Donald, and Thomas, were 
born while they lived in Maine.
At the Jackson Laboratory, Hes­
ton and other scientists hypoth­
esized about the relationship be­
tween genetics and cancer. "There I 
received a good foundation in can­
cer research and, above all, I was 
well indoctrinated in the value of 
inbred strains of experimental ani­
mals, particularly mice, in medical 
research and especially in cancer 
research," Heston explained years 
later. By forcing inbreeding, scien­
tists were able to increase or decrease 
the occurrences of certain forms of 
cancer and other diseases. At the 
laboratory, Heston established a 
breeding colony of mice that was 
later transferred to the National Can­
cer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
Throughout the years, various re­
searchers requested Heston's mice. 
Descendants of these mice are the 
basis for much of the medical re­
search in Japan; another group was 
exposed to atom bomb tests in the 
South Pacific.
When the doors of the National 
Cancer Institute opened in 1940, 
Heston was selected to be the mam­
malian geneticist. Given tremen­
dous latitude, he set about research­
ing, presenting seminars, training 
assistants, and publishing articles 
about cancer causation. Another Io­
wan, Bernie Bowen from Marshall­
town, worked alongside Heston, 
drawing tumors and tissues to illus­
trate his articles. (She later married 
Heston's friend and fellow re­
searcher, Lloyd Law, whose research 
on the flex-tail gene unraveled 
many of the mysteries of leukemia.) 
After years of drawing cancerous 
tumors for publications, including 
breast cancer tumors, Bowen died 
of complications of breast cancer.
T
he importance of Heston's 
work with mice lay in his or­
ganization and maintenance 
of the colony that was the basis for 
much of the genetic work at the 
National Cancer Institute. "Since I 
was the one on the staff... who spe­
cifically had received his degree in 
mammalian genetics," he ex­
plained, "I assumed a special re­
sponsibility for maintaining my 
colonies of inbred mice and foster­
ing the use of inbred strains in the 
research of the institute." He once 
commented, "My wife was later to 
find out that my mice had become 
more widely known than I was."
Heston's mice were identified 
as "HE3." To this day, whenever 1 
mention HE3 mice to researchers, 
they respond knowingly, "Yes, of 
course."
The origins of these mice were 
very rare brown mice from Tibet. 
After China fell to Communism in 
1949, they were hard to obtain. They 
were sought after because they were 
so genetically similar to humans 
and thus perfect for research.
During World War II, genetic 
research ended, and the focus 
shifted to the effects of continuous, 
long-term exposure to low-dosage 
gamma irradiation. "Instead of be­
ing placed in the Armed Forces," 
Heston recounted, "I was instructed 
to remain at NCI and to work along 
with Drs. Lorenz, Deringer, and 
Eschenbrenner on the Manhattan 
Project." A well was dug in the base­
ment of Building Six at the institute. 
Radium was lowered into the well 
and raised to the sub-basement at 
the end of every workday. A colony 
of mice was subjected to the radia­
tion. Heston and his colleagues 
were not informed as to why this 
research was being carried out. 
They assumed it related to the 
building of atomic-powered ships 
and what effects low-level emis­
sions might have on the crew.
Toward the end, it became 
clearer that the United States was 
making an atomic bomb. After the 
war, the radium was removed, the 
well filled in, and cancer research re- 
sumed. Heston predicted that 
among women who survived the 
atomic explosions in Japan, there 
would be high levels of ovarian can­
cer late in life.
In 1965, word traveled through­
out our family that Great-Uncle 
Walter had been awarded Italy's 
University of Perugia Alessandro 
Pascoli Prize for his genetic research 
on lung tumors in laboratory mice 
and that he had given the opening 
lecture at the university's interna­
tional conference. The next year, in­
stead of lecturing in Italy, he traveled 
to Iowa to join us at the Heston fam- 
ily reunion. His attendance that
148 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
summer of 1966 meant that many 
of us would be meeting him for the 
first time. Starting with Aunt Elsie 
Heston Thrasher, the elders intro­
duced their children and grandchil­
dren to our famous relative. With 
my grandmother, I waited my turn. 
But it was not until two years later 
at the 1968 reunion when he and 1 
shared a moment alone. We chatted 
—or at least I stumbled through a 
conversation with him. Later, in a 
letter to my grandmother, he wrote 
that my brother Lyle and I were nice 
youngsters and he invited us to 
Washington, D.C.
Lyle was working and could not 
go, but I could and did. I had never 
been east of the Mississippi River 
and marveled at the sights as my 
great-uncle and I drove eastward, 
stopping at Gettysburg en route. 
Every day in Washington I walked 
to the various monuments and mu­
seums, and I sat in the galleries 
through debates in Congress. It was 
a special honor to tour the National 
Cancer Institute, one of the world's 
most prestigious laboratories, and 
to spend days watching my great- 
uncle dissect tumors from mice. 
There he taught me the tenets of re­
search and modeled the persistence 
of a scientist studying a disease that 
was not giving up its secrets easily.
H
eston retired at the end of 
1975 after a 37-year career. 
He and his second wife, 
Blanche, moved to Florida. Now he
, \  j
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Mammalian geneticist Walter Heston 
in 1995, years after his retirement from 
the National Cancer Institute.
dabbled in another kind of science. 
He raised mangoes and citrus fruit 
in his backyard and toured Thomas 
Edison's rare plant garden in Fort 
Myers and the J. N. "Ding" Darling 
National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel 
Island. My daughter still has fond 
memories of visiting her great-great- 
uncle and their mutual love of egrets 
and other birds.
Our trips to Florida eventually 
ended. He died in January 1998 at 
age 88. He had selected "This Is My 
Father's World" to be sung at his 
memorial because that hymn had
J
guided him through his years of re­
search.
Already in the late 1960s I had 
recognized that Walter Heston was 
a great man—the type of person
who was great whether he was a 
factory laborer or a research scien­
tist. From his country-school days 
to his doctoral work at Michigan 
State, he gained an immense respect 
for educators: "They're the most im­
portant people in the world. Any na­
tion that is going to advance must 
have excellent teachers." He taught 
me humility, and he was frugal and 
doggedly persistent.
But it is only in reading about 
and pasting together his life's work 
that I became aware of his contri­
butions in charting a new course for 
cancer research—though he did not 
think in terms of "breakthroughs," 
explaining that even Mendel's work 
on genetics was not understood 
until after his death. Asked about 
his philosophy of science, he an­
swered, "I don't have one, except a 
simple desire to do something for 
mankind. When you work in can­
cer, you are doing something for 
mankind."
At a time when the average citi­
zen had little hope of surviving can­
cer, when the study of genetics was 
still "on the crest of cancer re­
search," Iowan Walter Heston had 
the scientist's ability to look cancer 
in the eye and not flinch. ❖
Mark Smith lives in Marshalltown, Iowa, 
anti is serving his third term in the Iowa 
House of Representatives, representing 
Marshalltown, Green Mowitain, Liscomb, 
Albion, and the surrounding rural areas. 
The great-nephew of cancer researcher 
Walter Heston, Smith is a survivor of 
prostate cancer.
NOTE ON SOURCES
Walter Heston's "Biography as Related to Inbred Strains of Experimental Animals," 
undated and apparently unpublished, was written by him during his retirement years 
in Fort Myers, Flonda, and includes a wealth of information about his career. The 
biography is in the authors private collection. O ther useful sources include Elizabeth 
Erickson et al., Celebrating 75 Years of the Roscoe B. Jackson Laboratory 1929-2004 
(Jackson Laboratory, 2004); Walter E. Heston (Chief, Laboratory of Biology, National 
Cancer Institute. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland), interview by
Wyndam Miles, May 26, 1964 (tapes and transcripts available at the National Library 
of Medicine. National Institutes of Health); Walter E. Heston, interview and videotape 
by Mark Smith, circa 19 9 1 (author's private collection); author's correspondence, 
Oct. 26,2004, with Michigan State Library regarding Harrison R Hunt and Walter E. 
Heston; and Walter E. Heston, “Inheritance of'webbed toes',"Journal of Heredity, 23 
(1932).The author's cousin Georgia f3ae Johnson has maintained Walter Heston's 
birthplace in Lucas County.
Winter 2005 149


Walter Enoch Heston: Lucas County Farm Boy abd World-Renowned Cancer Researcher

The Evolving Case against Smoking
Lapse of Morals to Hazard to Health
by Ronald D. Eckoff
C
igarette smoking is comparatively a recent 
habit in the United States, being introduced in 
the early [1870s]/' explained J. M. Emmert, a 
doctor in Atlantic, Iowa, in the 1895 State Board of 
Health report. "Like many other crimes and filthy hab­
its, it originated among the lower classes of Russia, Po­
land, and France, and for a long time was confined to 
the same classes in this country [and now is] adopted 
by the better class. . . . One of the most dangerous, de­
grading and demoralizing evils, [it] demands the early 
attention of our legislators." If the U.S. government 
could not outlaw cigarette manufacture and sales, he 
railed, then "states should protect their young men and 
boys by enacting prohibitory laws. This is easier said 
than done, for there is an immense amount of money 
and influence that will be used freely to cripple or ar­
rest any effort.... The Cigarette Trust has had lobbyists 
in swarms to buy, threaten and browbeat every officer 
who dared raise a voice against their nefarious business."
Emmert was not done. He had been told that many 
cigarettes "contain material from 
old cigar stumps and quids of to­
bacco culled from the gutters and 
sidewalks and cuspidors." Most 
were "impregnated with opium, 
arsenic, cocaine or some other en­
slaving drug." Smoking affected 
internal organs and the nervous 
system (leading to insanity, epi­
lepsy, or suicide). "The boy who 
smokes soon falls behind .. . ;  his 
memory becomes impaired; his 
brain dull and sluggish." He be­
comes "a street loafer or . . .  a 
criminal, pauper or idiot, . . .  a 
menace to society and a burden to
J
the state." Girls, too, Emmert 
noted, were smoking and likely 
to become addicted. g
U.S. sale of cigarettes had cata- § 
pulted from 1.5 million in 1869 to | 
more than 4.5 billion in 1896, i
passing cigar sales. As historian Lee Anderson points 
out, "The Iowa legislature, in fact, prohibited the manu­
facture and sale of cigarettes in the state. On the other 
hand, few respectable Iowans would condemn the en­
joyment of fine cigars by bankers, lawyers, and other 
solid, middle-class males. With issues of class, ethnicity, 
age, and gender so obviously underlying concerns about 
tobacco use, the chief objectionable effects of tobacco 
were behavioral rather than physiological."
In the 1903 report, a doctor connected smoking and 
alcohol. "I have never known a confirmed inebriate that 
was not, or had not been, addicted to the use of tobacco." 
A 1906 reprinted article cited smoking's addictive na­
ture and its "blasting and blighting effect... because it 
draws off energy, saps the vitality . . . blunts the sensi­
bilities .. .  and kills ambition."
Attacking cigarette smoking as an issue of morality 
and character was not unique to Iowa health profes­
sionals in the late 19th and early 20th century. The con­
nection to specific health problems took longer to firmly
establish in the minds of the 
medical world (not until the 
1950s), and then in the minds of 
the American public (when 
warning labels were required on 
cigarette packages, and television 
advertising was banned). Today 
anti-smoking campaigns also 
aim to educate individuals about 
choosing healthy behaviors and 
making lifestyle changes. ♦>
fir
Ronald D. Eckoff served 36 years at 
the Iowa Department of Public Health, 
as a division director-, division medi­
cal director, and twice as acting de­
partment director. He is preparing a 
history of state and local public health 
and welcomes information or sugges­
tions. Contact him at 12534 SW 
Maffitt Lake Drive, Gumming, Iowa 
50061, or at reckoff(d radiks.net.
c?)
T '
Summer 2005 91


The Evolving Case against Smoking: Lapse of Morals to Hazard to Health

Fait, Kathy

s
m w
Tracking Down Disease
The University of Iowa 
Hygienic Laboratory L'ijV /
'<+j.
*
by Kathy Fait
A
 century ago, in Storm Lake, or Atlantic, or 
Decorah, physicians who suspected a case of 
diphtheria, typhoid, or tuberculosis had access 
to the best laboratory in the state. Established by the 
state legislature in April 1904, the Bacteriological Labo­
ratory of the Iowa State Board of Health (now called 
the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory) had a lo­
cal presence in nearly every Iowa community.
Within months of its founding in Iowa City, doctors 
from across the state were sending specimens there to 
be tested. In September, W. B. Chase in Prairie City sent 
in a specimen that tested positive for tuberculosis. R. C. 
Baker of Oelwein sent the first suspected diphtheria 
sample. Fortunately for the patient, it was negative. All 
of this information—and hundreds of more cases—were 
recorded in a thick ledger, now part of the library col­
lections in the Hygienic Lab. As the century progressed, 
testing, diagnosing, and recording methods grew ever 
more sophisticated. Today, the lab's cutting-edge sci­
ence and highly trained staff continue to maintain close 
relationships with Iowans, while identifying and pro­
tecting them from menaces to public health.
Early on, Iowa bacteriologist Walter Bierring had
- Vv\
PHOTOS PAGES 89-71 COURTESY OF IOWA HYGIENIC LABORATORY LIBRARY
h' u
Ï
t *
Women have always 
played major roles on 
the Hygienic Lab 
staff. Here in 1920: 
(seated, from left) 
Ross Laybourn, Zel- 
ma Zentmire ,  and 
Henry Albert, the 
lab’s first director. 
Standing: Helen Davis, 
Katherine Bronson, 
Ethel Collins, and 
Minnie Hamilton.
*
WÊÊ
Harold Breese collects well wa­
ter for testing at the laboratory.
championed Iowa's 
need for "a fully 
equipped laboratory" 
that would be "much 
better for the study of
infectious diseases, than many a private laboratory, be­
cause it will be in intimate touch with every outbreak 
of disease throughout the state."
Already in 1906, the lab prepared and distributed 
sample kits to 677 "culture stations." In most towns, 
the local pharmacy became the culture station, where 
doctors could pick up the appropriate kits with the 
equipment for collecting the specimens. For a suspected 
case of diphtheria, the kit contained two test tubes and 
cotton swabs for taking a culture from the nose or throat; 
for typhoid, a wire loop for gathering a few drops of 
blood from a pricked earlobe or finger, and aluminum 
foil for packaging up the dried blood; and for tubercu­
losis, a glass bottle, with carbolic acid, to hold the spu­
tum.
The kits included directions on collecting the mate­
rial and a data card for statistical purposes for the State 
Board of Health. The doctor shipped the kit to the lab 
in Iowa City by train (the post office generally prohib­
ited sending bacteriological specimens); the state's well- 
developed train system ensured that samples from 
throughout the state were received in a timely manner 
for analysis. Results could then be sent back to local doc­
tors by mail. If a telegraphic reply was requested, the 
doctor would pay for the added expense. By 1910, more 
than 34,000 kits had been supplied to culture stations.
Always keeping up with the latest research, within 
only five years of its founding the Hygienic Lab was 
offering rabies treatment that was once available only 
in Paris. In the 19th century, a bite from a rabid dog 
meant almost certain, and excruciating, death. Then, in 
1885, Louis Pasteur saved the life of a nine-year-old boy 
who had been savagely bitten by a rabid dog by ad­
ministering a series of 14 shots of his new rabies vacci-
firn
Summer 2005 69
ST o
The Hygienic Laboratory repeatedly directed lowans who 
wanted their well water tested to use the water collection 
kits provided by the lab (right), rather than salt-glazed jugs 
and bottles stoppered with corncobs, corks, or rolled paper 
(above)—all likely to contaminate the sample.
nation. Within months, Pasteur's cure was being used 
throughout Europe. That same year, four young New 
Jersey boys were bitten by a suspected rabid dog. The 
New York Herald Tribune raised money to send the boys 
to France for the vaccine and a reporter to document 
their journey and their triumphant (and healthy) return. 
This coverage helped spread the word about the vac­
cine, and by 1890 both New York and Chicago boasted 
"Pasteur Institutes" for rabies treatment. In the next 20 
years, other Pasteur Institutes were begun in Baltimore, 
Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Ann Arbor, Austin, Atlanta, Ber­
keley, and Washington, D.C. Some were part of the 
states' public health laboratories or departments.
Iowa's Hygienic Laboratory was among those early 
Pasteur Institutes. It began treating rabies in February 
1909. No longer did lowans have to travel to Chicago 
for treatment of the dreaded disease. Instead, they could 
bring the dog's head for laboratory analysis and be 
treated at no charge in Iowa City.
Although the majority of the lab's work is done in 
Iowa City (or at the branch lab in Ankeny), staff mem­
bers have always traveled to farms and communities 
when necessary and when requested by local authori­
ties to investigate outbreaks of disease. In the early years, 
detailed investigations published in the Board of 
Health's biennial reports traced each case in the out­
break, listing the name, age, sex, residence, occupation, 
onset of disease, and when and where certain foods, 
milk, or water were consumed. These clues helped Hy­
gienic Lab investigators track down the connections 
between cases that ultimately pointed to the source.
In Pella, for instance, several cases of typhoid ap­
peared in the fall of 1915. The Hygienic Lab investiga­
tor systematically ruled out drinking water and ice 
cream consumed at a church social, narrowing it down 
to butter, and then to the dairy farm where it had been
made. The farm woman had had typhoid fever twice, 
that spring and as a child in Holland. All this pointed 
to her as a carrier.
In Clinton in 1929, 84 typhoid cases were traced to 
non-sterilized milk bottles. In 1930, in the Pocahontas 
area, an outbreak of typhoid fever in a threshing gang 
was attributed to a woman who had had typhoid ear­
lier and who had helped prepare a noon meal for the 
threshers.
During the second and third decades of the 1900s, 
the laboratory focused more efforts on sanitation and 
public water and sewage systems. Staff also checked 
water in swimming pools and passengers' water sup­
plies on trains. The lab provided an emergency chlori- 
nator to towns with epidemics because of unsafe water. 
In 1914, "the desire of the residents of Postville to in­
stall modern conveniences" had led to 85 sets of new 
toilets, bathtubs, and sinks. "The out-flow of these in­
stallations goes into cess pools principally, which some­
times overflow into tile drains, sometimes into the al­
ley, and sometimes, by seepage into adjacent soil. The 
result is that considerable amounts of unpurified sew- 
age are finding their way to the surface of the soil and 
constitute a menace to health." As always w'hen detail­
ing investigations, the laboratory's recommendations 
concluded the report.
T
he deadly diseases that had first dominated the 
laboratory's work gradually became less of a 
threat to the state's public health. By 1928, for 
example, more than half of Iowa schoolchildren had 
been immunized for diphtheria, and in six years, cases 
had dropped from 242 to 34, adding hope to the "No 
Diphtheria in Iowa by 1930" campaign. As the number 
of cases of tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, and rabies
70 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
waned, the Hygienic Lab focused on other diseases as 
well—including polio and spinal meningitis.
The world wars brought new attention to venereal 
diseases, and legislation mandating blood tests of 
couples before marriage and of expectant mothers vastly 
increased the burden on the lab.
During the 1950s and 1960s, blood tests began be­
ing devised to identify metabolic and endocrine disor­
ders. Phenylketonuria (also known as PKU) was the first 
metabolic disease to be identified by a test performed 
on a dried blood spot taken from a newborn infant's 
heel. PKU causes mental retardation, but early diet 
theraphy can prevent it. The Hygienic Lab's Newborn 
Screening Section began testing for PKU in 1966. In 1980 
pilot projects began testing for galactosemia, MSUD, and 
hypothyroidism.
By 1983 newborn screening became mandatory in 
Iowa and was conducted at the Hygienic Lab's Des 
Moines branch lab (now located in Ankeny); the lab now 
tests Iowa newborns for more than 30 separate meta­
bolic and endocrine disorders. Though rare individu­
ally, the incidence of these disorders is 1 in 4,000 new­
borns. With early detection and proper treatment, chil­
dren can be saved a lifetime of trouble.
The 1970s brought environmental concerns to the 
forefront. Hygienic Lab staff increasingly tested for pes­
ticide concentrations, lead, mercury, and other heavy 
metals contamination.
As has been said, the Hygienic Laboratory is
Ethel Cooper accepts a specimen from Harold Breese.The 
container probably holds a dog’s head to be tested for rabies.
"known less by its efforts than by its conclusions." Ev­
ery baby born in Iowa is screened; water, air, and soil 
are constantly monitored; new diseases like West Nile 
virus, SARS, and avian flu are tracked; and bioterrorism 
acts are prepared for. Although the work of the Hygienic 
Laboratory is largely invisible, its impact is best seen in 
the continued good health of Iowans. ❖
Kathy Fait is the librarian at the University Hygienic Labora 
tory in Iowa Cihf.
January 1941: The Hygienic Lab’s sero­
logical workers open mailing tubes from 
Iowa’s 120 draft boards. The packages 
contained blood samples to be tested 
for syphilis. Opened in 1917, the serol­
ogy unit had tested more than a million 
blood samples for syphilis by the time 
of this photo. From left: Helen (Bliss) 
Halperin,Verna (Cordes) Carpenter, and 
Eileen Wharter.


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