Hardy, Harriet Louise, 1906-

See finding aid for Harriet Louise Hardy Papers, MC 387.

Physician and specialist in occupational medicine, Harriet Louise Hardy was born on September 23, 1906, in Arlington, Massachusetts. Her father, Horace Dexter Hardy, a lawyer, died of pneumonia when HLH was four. Her mother, Harriet Louise (Decker) Hardy, married engineer Charles Maxwell Sears in 1912. HLH graduated from Kent Place, a private boarding school in New Jersey, in 1924.

From an early age, HLH wanted to be a doctor. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1928, she attended Cornell University Medical School (M.D., 1932) over the initial objections of her parents. After completing her residency at the Philadelphia General Hospital (1932-34), she decided to specialize in pediatrics, and in 1934 she became the physician for the Northfield Seminary (Mass.), a preparatory school for girls. The dearth of other doctors there and a surplus of healthy students led her to private general practice as well. She also worked with the Franklin County Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (1935-39) and initiated the Pediatric Clinic in the Franklin County Hospital in Greenfield.

In 1939, HLH became college physician and head of the Department of Health Education at Radcliffe College. A year later, she began her life-long association with the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She remained at Radcliffe until 1945, when she began work for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and soon after, the Massachusetts Division of Occupational Hygiene (Sept. 1945 - Jan. 1948, Jan.-May 1949). During this period HLH became intensely interested in the diagnosis, treatment, and particularly the prevention of industrially-produced disease. A major contribution was the discovery (1945-46) that exposure to beryllium, then widely in use in fluorescent light bulb factories, caused tuberculosis-like symptoms, and was often fatal. HLH stirred up a storm of controversy by finding former employees, documenting their cases, investigating working conditions (against the opposition of beryllium manufacturers and users), and presenting her findings in various research settings. Eventually, however, even the industry came to accept her findings, that beryllium disease was predictable, often fatal, and preventable. In 1952 she founded the Beryllium Case Registry at MGH to document all known cases of the disease.

Her beryllium work caught the attention of Dr. Alice Hamilton (1869-1970), an earlier pioneer in industrial toxicology. AH asked HLH to help her to produce a new edition of AH's seminal work, Industrial Toxicology. HLH was the junior author of the 1949 edition, and twenty-five years later, the major author of the third edition.

After a year (Jan. 1948 - Jan. 1949) as Health Division Group Leader for the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, where she studied radiation hazards and protective measures for workers, HLH took charge of the Occupational Medical Service of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Medical Department. There she helped develop the preventive aspects of occupational medicine that she believed were essential to workers' health.

In addition to research and service on numerous professional committees, both national and international, HLH devoted herself to teaching. She taught at Harvard Medical School (where she was the first woman to hold a full professorship), Harvard School of Public Health, MIT, Tufts Medical School, and Dartmouth Medical School (1971-73). She urged the respective faculties to give more weight to training for occupational medicine, and for what she termed clinical preventive medicine. HLH served as mentor to numerous students, whether in her classes or writing from afar.

HLH's interest in dust-induced respiratory diseases (e.g., asbestosis) led her to investigatory trips to Europe (especially Great Britain) in 1950 and 1956, and Africa (South Africa, and what was then the Congo) in 1957 to study mining conditions. On this last trip she met with Dr. Albert Schweitzer; see #70 for her description of his attitudes toward the native people.

In addition to her extensive professional activities, HLH found satisfaction in nature, retreating to Dorset, Vermont, and other rural areas for rest and spiritual renewal. With her great curiosity and keen intellect, she read widely in philosophy, history, and literature as well as medicine. Her accomplishments were made in spite of several serious illnesses, the most dangerous of which was a meningioma (brain tumor), removed in August 1972. After a long recovery, she resumed seeing patients, and writing and publishing. She is now retired and lives in Holyoke, Mass., with her sister, Jane (Hardy) Stewart.

For additional biographical information, see Series I of this collection; HLH's autobiography, Challenging Man-Made Disease: The Memoirs of Harriet L. Hardy, M.D. (with the editorial assistance of Emily W. Rabe, New York, Praeger, 1983); and the Schlesinger Library Biography File.

Physician and specialist in occupational medicine (Wellesley, A.B., 1928; Cornell University Medical School, M.D., 1932), Hardy was college physician and head of the Department of Health Education at Radcliffe (1939-1945). She identified beryllium poisoning, a new disease among workers, and collaborated with Alice Hamilton on revised editions of Insustrial Toxicology. Associated with the Massachusetts General Hospital in a number of capacities from 1940 on, she was chief of the Occupational Medical Clinic (1949-1961), and founded and was in charge of the Occupational Medical Service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1950-1971). Hardy taught at the Harvard Medical School, in the Department of Industrial Hygiene at the Harvard School of Public Health, at Tufts and at MIT. She died in 1993.

Physician and specialist in occupational medicine (Wellesley, A.B., 1928; Cornell University Medical School, M.D., 1932), Hardy was college physician and head of the Department of Health Education at Radcliffe (1939-1945). She identified beryllium poisoning, a new disease among workers, and collaborated with Alice Hamilton on revised editions of Industrial Toxicology. Associated with the Massachusetts General Hospital in a number of capacities from 1940 on, she was chief of the Occupational Medical Clinic (1949-1961), and founded and was in charge of the Occupational Medical Service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1950-1971). Hardy taught at the Harvard Medical School, in the Department of Industrial Hygiene at the Harvard School of Public Health, at Tufts and at MIT.