Page "Chicago" Paragraph 12

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health.

City, and later state laws, that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, small pox, and yellow fever were not only passed, but also enforced.

These in turn became templates for public health reform in many other cities and states.

The city invested in many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities.

The chief advocate and driving force for improving public health in Chicago was Dr. John H. Rauch, M. D., who established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866, created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with festering, shallow graves, and helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health in 1867 in response to an outbreak of cholera.

Ten years later he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.