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Historical records matching Dr. Simon Baruch
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About Dr. Simon Baruch
Simon Baruch (1840–1921) was a German immigrant of Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity who came by himself to the United States in 1855, when he was 15 years old. He studied medicine, became a doctor, and served as a surgeon on the staff of Confederate general Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War.
From Schwersenz, Germany. AB Mercer
Polish Jewish physician, scholar, and the foremost advocate of the urban public bathhouse to benefit public health in the United States.
He attended the Royal Gymnasium in Posen-West Prussia. In 1855 he left Poland (under German partition) and emigrated to South Carolina at 15 years old to live with the Manus Baum family five years after their arrival in America. Baruch worked for Manus Baum as a bookkeeper before beginning to study medicine in 1859. Baruch attended lectures at the Medical College of the State of South Carolina, and enrolled at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV), (now Virginia Commonwealth University) in Richmond, Virginia, where he received a medical degree in 1862.
Baruch began his career as a surgeon in the American Civil War; serving in the Confederate States Army and reportedly entering the service "without even having lanced a boil." He initially accepted a commission as assistant surgeon of the 3rd South Carolina Battalion on April 4, 1862, and in August of that same year, he transferred to the 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, in the position of surgeon. During the war, Baruch gained considerable surgical experience. After the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg in July 1863, he stayed on to treat the wounded for six weeks. Afterwards, he was imprisoned at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, and he returned to his unit in December 1863. Following a period of ill health, he returned to the 13th Mississippi Regiment 6 months later, and he served until the end of the war.
After the war, Baruch remained in the South during the Reconstruction Era, where he practiced medicine and authored a widely read pamphlet on "Bayonet Wounds". In 1865, Baruch went to New York City, where he worked for one year in a postgraduate position as an attending physician to the Medical Polyclinic of the North-Eastern Dispensary in the Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan district of Manhattan – a bastion of poor and working-class people. There, Baruch tended to patients who were suffering from communicable infection, most of whom lacked access to clean bath water, fresh air, and sunshine. A year later, Dr. Baruch returned to Camden, South Carolina, in 1867.
Medical career
For 16 years Baruch practiced medicine in South Carolina. He also advocated for the smallpox vaccination for the children of the state, and he helped to reactivate the South Carolina State Medical Association, serving as president. He held a position on the faculty of the South Carolina State Medical College, and he was chairman of the Board of Health, later renamed South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.[8] However, Baruch grew increasingly dissatisfied with the indiscriminate use of unproven medical remedies. He studied the healing philosophies of Austrian physician Vincent Priessnitz (1799–1852), and in particular, the success of a therapeutic spa in the Silesian Foothills. The remedies were largely predicated upon frequent bathing and irrigation of the gastrointestinal tract; an alternative form of medicine called hydrotherapy.[9] Patients recuperated in a restful, calm environment, ate a prudent diet, eliminated alcohol and tobacco, and engaged in physical activity. Later, Baruch also credited Wilhelm Winternitz for his pioneering work in hydrotherapy.[10] Baruch would go on to introduce medicinal spring therapies, known as balneology, and hydrotherapy to the United States of America.[11]
In 1881, Baruch took up residence in New York City with his wife Belle, and their four sons, Hartwig ("Harty") Nathaniel (1868–1953), Bernard Mannes (1870–1965), Herman Benjamin (1872–1953), and Sailing Wolfe (1874–1963). He became known as an active public health advocate and medical writer. He also gained professional credibility for diagnosing the first case of perforating appendicitis successfully operated on, and in the widely publicized "child cruelty" case involving the musical prodigy Josef Hofmann, Baruch was the consulting physician. After examining Hofmann, Baruch recommended the boy musician rest and resume the lifestyle of a child. In 1892, Baruch became a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.
As a physician and scholar, Baruch's enduring interest in hydrotherapy guided many his professional and civic pursuits.[16] He published the standard texts, The Uses of Water in Modern Medicine (1892), Therapeutic reflections: a plea for physiological remedies (1893), and The Principles and Practice of Hydrotherapy (1898).[17][18] From 1903 to 1913, he taught a course in hydro-therapeutics, or methods of using water to treat various diseases, at New York Post Graduate Medical School and Hospital of the University of the State of New York.[19] He resigned when hydrotherapy was made an elective subject of study. In 1910, Baruch wrote Lessons of half a century in medicine.[20] In 1920, he authored Epitome of hydrotherapy for physicians, architects and nurses.[21]
Notably, Baruch's interest in hydrotherapy led to his role as the country's foremost municipal bath advocate. Ever since his trip in the 1880s to study the public bath system of Germany, Baruch was a tireless advocate for free public baths in New York City, during a period of immigration in American history when newcomers flooded cities. After he studied hydrotherapy, and understood the utility of fresh water to the prevention of infection. Baruch worked tirelessly to educate public officials and the medical community about the importance of water to public health.[22] For many years, the general public and civic leaders were skeptical about the debilitating effects of poor sanitation on physical health; pessimistic Mayor Hugh J. Grant (1852–1910) declared, "The people won't bathe." Despite decades of opposition, Baruch managed to convince three successive mayors of the utility of water, and in particular, the importance of a public bath system to the population health of the urban working class and poor.
He wrote numerous journal and newspaper articles on the medical utility of water, including first article published in America on public baths for the Philadelphia Medical Times and Register on August 24, 1889.[24] He reported on the structure, functioning, and health benefits of a public bath systems to the New York's Committee on Hygiene, in his role as chairman. Baruch also delivered addresses on the topic to medical and scientific societies. Moreover, Baruch was medical editor at the New York Sun, from 1912 to 1918, and he covered all the major health concerns of the period, and wrote articles on a variety of topics, from the common cold to malarial fevers.
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Dr. Simon Baruch's Timeline
| 1840 |
July 29, 1840
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Schwersenz, Prussia, Swarzędz, poznański, wielkopolskie, Poland
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| 1870 |
August 19, 1870
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Camden, Kershaw, South Carolina, United States
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| 1872 |
April 28, 1872
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Camden, SC, United States
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| 1874 |
February 1, 1874
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Camden, Kershaw, SC, United States
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| 1876 |
1876
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Winnsboro, SC, United States
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| 1921 |
June 3, 1921
Age 80
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New York, New York, United States
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June 3, 1921
Age 80
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