The Early Years

An enlarged Yates Street facility opened for business on November 1, 1906, and provided for the first time a single site for all laboratory activities. These included antitoxin manufacture, diagnostic examinations for the detection of infectious diseases and control of quarantines, and special investigations of epidemics or unsanitary conditions. A chemist and a bacteriologist were hired and new services introduced, including the sanitary chemical examination of water, seen here.

Remarking on this effort in the Department's annual report the following year, Commissioner Eugene H. Porter, M.D., wrote:

"Some of the conditions which the Department has discovered through the work of the State Laboratory would seem to indicate that something wet was the only standard for quality of certain water supplies." In addition to testing drinking water, the laboratory also undertook "a more thorough and exhaustive investigation of beers brewed and sold in this State."

The Early Years...

• Introduction
• Antitoxin Laboratory - Yates Street, Albany, New York
• Manufacturing of the diphtheria antitoxin
• Examining the products for sterility and potency
• Production pipeline ended in the laboratory's shipping room
• Single site for all laboratory activities
• Recruiting personnel to staff the expanded laboratory
• New York City's Quarantine Station
• Wish for a farm was granted in May, 1913
• Media production facility
• Dr. Augustus B. Wadsworth and staff