Kate Mazza, today’s guest blogger, received her doctorate in US history from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her dissertation, “The Biological Engineers: Health Creation and Promotion in the United States, 1880-1920” examines the ideas and progress of the interrelated health reforms of physical education and school hygiene. She has published an article, “Distracted At School: Aprosexia, ADHD and Adenoids in American Culture” in the Journal of American Culture.

As the school year came to a close in June 1906, a panic swept through New York’s Lower East Side. According to newspaper reports, hundreds of parents, mostly Eastern European immigrants, ran to about a dozen local schools believing that their children were going to be harmed or murdered by doctors. Some people broke windows, some hit school workers, many yelled and cried and all demanded to see their children. At each school, children were eventually dismissed early, and, to the great…