Annual Report Of The Department Of Health Of The City Of New York For The Calendar Year

Poliomyelitis, better known as polio, thoroughly stumped the medical science community. Polio's impact remained highly visible and sometimes lingered, exacting a priceless physical toll on its young victims and their families as well as transforming their social worlds. This social history of infantile paralysis is plugged into the rich and dynamic developments of the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Children became epidemic refugees because of anachronistic public health policies and practices. They entered the emerging, clinical world of the hospital, rupturing physical and emotional connections with their parents and siblings. As they underwent rehabilitation, they created ward cultures. They returned home to occasionally find hostile environments and always discover changed relationships due to their disabilities. The changing concept of the child, from an economic asset to an emotional commitment, medical advances, and improved sanitation policies led to significant improvements in child health and welfare. This study, relying on published autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories, captures the impact of this disease on children's personal lives, encompassing public-health policies, hospitalization, philanthropic and organizational responses, physical therapy, family life, and schooling. It captures the anger, frustration, and terror not only among children but parents, neighbors, and medical professionals alike.

A risk factor is anything that increases the risk of disease in an individual.

The result is a probing history of medicine that details the social world of New York physicians, their ideas about a rare and perplexing disorder, and the struggles of an ever-changing, ever-challenging urban society.

This history of public health service in the United States spans more than a century of conflict and controversy with the authors situating the tension inherent in public health surveilance in a broad social and political context.

Includes section, "Recent book acquisitions" (varies: Recent United States publications) formerly published separately by the U.S. Army Medical Library.

This is a study of global public health. Plague, pollution and prostitution are all examined in turn. The author shows how basic trust in public health systems has collapsed and how our global public health system has been systematically destroyed.