Maryland, the Marine Hospital Service, and the Medical Relief of Chesapeake Oyster Dredgers, 1870-1900

Abstract

The thesis will be challenging the notion that the federal government took a hands-off approach to industrial health during the Gilded Age by examining the stances taken by the Maryland government and that of the federal Marine Hospital Service (MHS) in specific relation to oyster dredgers of the Chesapeake Bay. It will highlight the important role played by newly professionalized bureaucracies in developing public policy through its examination of the creation of the MHS Relief Station at Solomons Island in Southern Maryland. It will also show that policymakers viewed the Chesapeake Bay as an industrial space and how that construction refracted responses to the oyster dredgers’ health problems.