John Henry Rauch

Who was John Henry Rauch?

John Henry Rauch was an American sanitarian. He brought attention to public health problems posed by cemeteries in large cities and handled the public health emergencies posed by the Chicago fire of 1871. He was the founding president of the Illinois State Board of Health.

Rauch graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania and settled in Burlington, Iowa. In 1850, on the organization of the Iowa State Medical Society, he was appointed to report on the “Medical and Economic Botany of Iowa,” and this report was afterward published. He was an active member of the Iowa Historical and Geological Institute, and made a collection of material — especially ichthyologic — from the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers for Prof. Louis Agassiz, a description of which was published in Silliman's Journal.

In 1857, he was appointed professor of materia medica and medical botany in Rush Medical College, Chicago, which chair he filled for the next three years. In 1859, he was one of the organizers of the Chicago College of Pharmacy and filled its chair of materia medica and medical botany.