Simon Baruch

Simon Baruch (July 29, 1840 - June 3, 1921) was a physician, scholar, and the foremost advocate of the urban public bathhouse to benefit public health in the United States.

Simon Baruch, the son of Bernard and Theresa (Green), was born July 29, 1840 in Schwersenz. He attended the Royal Gymnasium in Posen-West Prussia. In 1855 he immigrated to South Carolina at 15-years-old to live with the Manus Baum family five years after their arrival in America. Baruch worked for Manus Baum as a bookkeeper before beginning to study medicine in 1859. Baruch attended lectures at the Medical College of the State of South Carolina, and enrolled at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV), (now Virginia Commonwealth University) in Richmond, Virginia, where he received a medical degree in 1862.

Baruch began his career as a surgeon in the Confederate Army; reportedly entering the service “without even having lanced a boil.” He initially accepted a commission as Assistant Surgeon of the 3rd South Carolina Battalion on April 4, 1864, and in August of that same year, he transferred to the 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, in the position of Surgeon. During the Civil War, Baruch gained considerable surgical experience. After the Confederate surrender at Gettysburg in July 1863, he stayed on to treat the wounded for six weeks. Afterwards, he was imprisoned at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, and he returned to his unit in December 1863. Following a period of ill health, he returned to the 13th Mississippi Regiment 6-months later, and he served until the end of the war.

After the war, Baruch remained in the South during the Reconstruction Era, where he practiced medicine and authored a widely read pamphlet on "Bayonet Wounds." In 1865, Baruch went to New York City where he worked for one year in a post-graduate position as an attending physician to the Medical Polyclinic of the North-Eastern Dispensary in the Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan district of Manhattan - a bastion of poor and working-class people. There, Baruch tended to patients who were suffering from communicable infection, most of whom lacked access to clean bath water, fresh air, and sunshine. A year later, Dr. Baruch returned to Camden, South Carolina, in 1867.

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