Q. You spoke about Van Rensselaer’s excellence as a communicator. Can you elaborate?
A. As primary caretakers for the home, women carried a tremendous responsibility for their family’s health. Her ability to translate scientific information so effectively for rural communities was remarkable. She was respectful, warm and used storytelling to suggest practical tips without judgement.
"For coughing and sneezing ‘in the open’ there is no excuse. A handkerchief should be within easy reach to catch the offending spray from the mouth and nostrils. The truth of this statement is an argument for a pocket in a woman's dress, in which to keep the handkerchief." —Martha Van Rensselaer, 1913
Q. What made you focus on the sanitation bulletins?
A. When I applied for the fellowship, I started with a few possible threads: housing research with Glenn Beyer; Flora Rose’s work on nutrition as a way of preventing tuberculosis in children. Somewhere along the way I started reading the Farmers’ Wives’ sanitation bulletins. As soon as I began reading, I knew they had to be my focus.
Q. Is that open-mindedness typical when asking a research question?
A. Absolutely. You have to enter research with an open mind. Imagine if scientists searching for the COVID vaccine hadn't been open to mRNA technology. We might not be where we are today.
I started following several threads, and honestly, it was hard to let them go because they were so fascinating.
Q. Why is it important to look back at these archival documents?
A. Today we have many preventable diseases, so it’s important to ask: where were we when these diseases could not be prevented? What did people do then?
Van Rensselaer’s collaboration with others was essential. She reached out to faculty experts in other fields asking for their help.
It can be hard to admit you don’t know and to ask for help. That's something that we need to do more of today. There’s so much mistrust. People need to feel comfortable trusting the science that's coming out of our institutions.
You can't do all your own research, no matter how much you read, even if you're reading just academic peer-reviewed journals.
Q. Is there anything else that you would like to add?
A. I hope that more people get excited to explore the CHE archives. You don’t know what you're going to find! There are so many lessons that we can take from it.
I really hope people start to look at the current topics that they're interested in and ask what was going on 100 years ago? Or 50 years ago? It's just such a rich collection.
