Edgar Holden M D Of Newark New Jersey Provincial Physician On A National Stage

Edgar Holden, M.D., of Newark: Provincial Physician on a National Stage is a study of medicine and health in Essex County, New Jersey, and its largest city, Newark, in the decades following the Civil War. Th e book is structured around the multifaceted career of Edgar Holden, a Newark physician who transcended the provinciality that characterized Essex Countys medical community and institutions. Th e author demonstrates how institution building and new paradigms of medical authority funneled from burgeoning urban medical centers into the provincial and sluggish medical landscape of northern New Jersey. Th e lack of a medical school within the state stymied the intellectual and professional ferment that the best nineteenth-century American medical schools attracted and fostered. New York City, with its medical institutions and elite practitioners cast a giant shadow over northern New Jersey, which consequently has been somewhat neglected by historians of medicine. An exploration of this lively community of welltrained practitioners, fl edgling institutions, and ailing citizens sheds light on similar medical communities that found themselves importingbut rarely exportingmedical knowledge and expertise.

Edgar Holden, M.D., of Newark: Provincial Physician on a National Stage is a study of medicine and health in Essex County, New Jersey, and its largest city, Newark, in the decades following the Civil War. Th e book is structured around the multifaceted career of Edgar Holden, a Newark physician who transcended the provinciality that characterized Essex County?s medical community and institutions. Th e author demonstrates how institution building and new paradigms of medical authority funneled from burgeoning urban medical centers into the provincial and sluggish medical landscape of northern New Jersey. Th e lack of a medical school within the state stymied the intellectual and professional ferment that the best nineteenth-century American medical schools attracted and fostered. New York City, with its medical institutions and elite practitioners cast a giant shadow over northern New Jersey, which consequently has been somewhat neglected by historians of medicine. An exploration of this lively community of welltrained practitioners, fl edgling institutions, and ailing citizens sheds light on similar medical communities that found themselves importing?but rarely exporting?medical knowledge and expertise.

The sphygmograph was one of the promising instruments of precision that captured the imagination of mid- and late-nineteenth-century physicians eager to plumb the secrets of the circulatory system. Literally a pulse writer, the sphygmograph allowed physicians to study a permanent record (sphygmogram) of the contours and rhythms of the pulse wave. The early masters of the sphygmograph were hopeful that images of the pulse at the wrist could reveal much about the action of the heart and major blood vessels that would prove useful in research and practice. Although the sphygmograph proved to be a frustrating instrument and its pulse recordings confusing, it prepared early twentieth-century physicians to embrace more reliable technologies, such as the sphygmomanometer (blood pressure cuff) and the electrocardiograph. This book traces the European invention, development, and application of the sphygmograph before turning to a detailed study of the novel instruments and clinical investigations of three heretofore unremarked American sphygmograph men and the role of the sphygmograph in American medical practice, most notably in the hands of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. A final chapter examines the pervasive problems of the sphygmograph in the context of recent literature on apparent failures of technology.

POLIOMYELITIS: NEWARK 1916 THE GRIP OF FEAR is a study of the devastating "scourge" that struck the city of Newark a century ago. Most victims were infants and toddlers for whom there were no effective treatments, no vaccines, and no iron lungs. Per capita, Newark was the hardest hit of any American city, with 1,360 cases and 363 deaths. The book draws heavily on newspaper accounts, public health documents, and the accounts of physicians who faced the epidemic with uncertain knowledge and no effective treatment. Public health officials, as in all epidemics, desperately sought to limit the spread of disease and, in the process, risked creating a medical police state. Hundreds of survivors faced a lifetime of disability, giving poliomyelitis its particular power to terrify.

In some respect each of this collection of essays pertains to New Jerseys medical history. Although each chapter stands alone and may differ in style and tone, together they provide a narrative history of medical practice from pre-Colonial times almost to the present. The narrative depicts a kaleidoscope of medical personalities - some heroic, others distinctly not.

A narrative analysis of the complex evolution of the Continental Army, with the lineages of the 177 individual units that comprised the Army, and fourteen charts depicting regimental organization.