Department of Environmental Health

http://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/file_upload/0003741_ref.jpg

Will Forbes is seated in a plethysmograph, also known as a “body box”, with Jim Whittenberger, Jere Mead, and Mary Amdur in attendance, circa 1960. This device was used to measure breathing, lung gas volume, and airway resistance by the Department of Physiology. The photograph was likely taken in lab space at 55 Shattuck Street, the original site of the Harvard School of Public Health (now part of Children’s Hospital).

The Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health traces its roots to the 1913 founding of the school, then known as the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers.

Research in the department has a distinguished history, and includes the fields of occupational health, physiology, and sanitary engineering.