Early Life
Thomas William Salmon was born on January 6, 1876, in Lansingburgh, a neighborhood of Troy, in central New York.
The Salmons were originally from Lorraine, where they had owned estates until 1766, when France annexed the Duchy of Lorraine. Leaving Lorraine, Salmon’s great-grandfather, Nicholas, fled to England, married, and pressured the French government to return the family lands through the French Revolution. To this end, Nicholas was received by Napoleon at Versailles (1). He promised to return the family estates, but this never transpired. Nicholas did manage to publish an English-French dictionary in Paris in 1816, before returning to England. He died in 1822 after a gun misfired and hit him at a banquet in London. Nicholas’ second son, Thomas William, became a schoolmaster in Stratford-upon-Avon, home of Shakespeare. Thomas William’s son, Thomas Henry, became a surgeon in the British Merchant Marine. He moved to America in 1860, settling in Lansingburgh. His medical practice, however, was unsuccessful, and he incurred large debts (2). Thomas Henry married Annie, and they had two children: Thomas William (subject of this exhibition) and Frank.
Thomas William Salmon’s childhood was marked by loss. Three of his siblings passed away in infancy. His mother, Annie, was despondent, and as Salmon recalled years later, urged him to walk onto the frozen Hudson River with her, where they would both freeze to death. Salmon talked his mother back from the brink, but she lavished her affections on Salmon’s older brother, Frank.
At age 19, Salmon entered medical school at Albany’s renowned medical college. Here, like most medical students of his day, he studied a general medical curriculum, without taking a specialization in any particular form of medicine. Among the students, Salmon was known for his drawing skills, and he routinely drew diagrams for professors to use in their classes. In 1896, Frank passed away, soon to be followed by Annie, leaving Salmon and his father devastated. Salmon’s father also passed away in 1898, leaving Salmon alone in the world (3).
Upon graduation in 1899, Salmon embarked on a career as a local doctor in Brewster, NY. While he gathered a small clientele of patients, he failed to make ends meet, often asking for little or no payment in return for care (4). During this time, he married Helen Ashley, with whom he was deeply in love. A first son, Thomas Kingerlee, was born in October 1900.
Bereft of funds, Salmon took a position at the Willard State Hospital to investigate an outbreak of diphtheria in October 1901. Here, he published his first piece of writing, a statistical survey entitled "The Relation of Mild Types of Diphtheria to the Public Health" (1903). This work constituted his first engagement with statistical modes of analysis. Statistics would become Salmon’s bread and butter, critical in establishing his credibility as an epidemiologist.
Willard provided Salmon with his first experience in public medical service and his first experience with psychiatry. At Willard, Salmon met William L. Russell, a New York psychiatrist who persuaded him to take the Public Health Service Examination (5).
Salmon passed the exam in 1903, after which he was offered a position as Assistant Surgeon at the immigration facility on Ellis Island in New York City. Accepting the position, Salmon moved to New York City in 1904, taking up residence in Staten Island’s West New Brighton neighborhood at 128 Bard Avenue.
Working at Ellis Island presented Salmon with new opportunities for career advancement: being employed by the federal US Public Health Service opened doors to more high-profile appointments across the country, while working on Ellis Island offered a chance to engage with patients from all over Europe. As Salmon was soon to find out, however, Ellis Island was also one of the most high-pressure work environments in the early 20th-century United States. A human tidal wave would soon crash over him, radically transforming his career trajectory.