Search Results

Origins

Antonio M. Gotto and Jennifer Moon

in Weill Cornell Medicine: A History of Cornell's Medical School

This chapter details the establishment of Cornell University's medical department. Within a few years of Cornell's founding in 1865, the university started offering a four-year course in natural ... More

This chapter details the establishment of Cornell University's medical department. Within a few years of Cornell's founding in 1865, the university started offering a four-year course in natural history leading to a Bachelor of Science degree. The program was considered good preparation for students contemplating a career in medicine, but there were no large hospitals that were suitable for training medical students. In 1885, Charles Adams became Cornell's second president and attempted to expand the university by creating a medical school, although his efforts were frustrated after failing to pitch the idea to Cornell's board of trustees. Ultimately, in 1898, a proposal to create a new medical school that would maintain both high academic standards and financial stability presented itself, backed by Colonel Oliver H. Payne along with Dr. Lewis Stimson and Dr. Alfred L. Loomis.Less

Power: “We Are Not Doctors but Delousers”

Golfo Alexopoulos

in Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag

This chapter illustrates the challenges faced by the Gulag medical-sanitation department. The principal task of this department was to maximize the number of working prisoners. Yet health care ... More

This chapter illustrates the challenges faced by the Gulag medical-sanitation department. The principal task of this department was to maximize the number of working prisoners. Yet health care workers operated in a highly constrained environment and were forced to serve the system of physical exploitation. The Stalinist leadership established quotas and target figures on the numbers of prisoners that had to perform the basic work (osnovnaia rabota) of the camp, be it construction, mining, or forestry. There were also quotas restricting the number of inmates who were sick, hospitalized, in recovery or convalescent camps, invalids and nonworking, and even quotas on mortality. Doctors who undermined the camp's mandated quotas often faced punishment. And although the department was tasked with a great deal, it possessed little power within the camp hierarchy. Hence Gulag health care workers, even the well-intentioned, came to be associated with mass violence.Less

Delivering Health Care

Tee L. Guidotti

in Global Occupational Health

Occupational health services in industry provide health care and preventive services in order to maintain the health of all employees, not just to provide medical care for the injured or those who ... More

Occupational health services in industry provide health care and preventive services in order to maintain the health of all employees, not just to provide medical care for the injured or those who have been made ill by a hazard. Thus, occupational health services may be divided into curative, or treatment-oriented, and preventive services. Occupational health services may be located in the plant, or off site. A corporate medical department usually coordinates occupational health throughout the enterprise. There should be a written occupational health policy that spells out the responsibility of employers for the health of workers and the responsibility of workers to report problems. Enterprises with more than 1000 workers usually need a full-time, in-house corporate medical department. This department should have a close working relationship with safety and occupational hygiene departments and they are often combined. It is generally better that the occupational health service not be managed under the department of human resources or personnel, where hiring and termination decisions are made and insurance claims are managed. Occupational health and safety must ultimately be the responsibility of supervisors and managers in production and they must be held accountable for injuries and avoidable hazards in the work areas they manage, with support from the occupational health service. The occupational health service has to be seen by the workers as neutral and working for their interests, not as looking for ways to fire them or to deny their claims. Occupational health services should maintain detailed records on the personal health of workers and should keep them strictly confidential. Workers’ compensation is a form of insurance that is compulsory for employers in many countries.Less

Soldiers and Official Military Health Care

Kathryn Shively Meier

in Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia

This chapter shows how soldiers were not completely unarmed in their fight for survival in the elements; they were part of an official network of health care developed by their respective Medical ... More

This chapter shows how soldiers were not completely unarmed in their fight for survival in the elements; they were part of an official network of health care developed by their respective Medical Departments. The Union and Confederate war machines busily set about constructing sprawling and impressive health systems that would reduce the number of disease mortalities at war's end from the staggering eighty percent of the Mexican-American War to just sixty-six percent. And yet, 1862 was a year of trial, failure, and reinvention in terms of infrastructure, and soldiers were unaccustomed to professional care.Less

Illness and Mortality: “Lost Labor Days”

Golfo Alexopoulos

in Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag

This chapter discusses the role of the Gulag medical-sanitation department. Their task was not necessarily to keep prisoners healthy, but to maximize exploitation and minimize “labor losses.” The ... More

This chapter discusses the role of the Gulag medical-sanitation department. Their task was not necessarily to keep prisoners healthy, but to maximize exploitation and minimize “labor losses.” The Gulag routinely reported health data under the heading “illness and lost labor.” Inmate health was only relevant as it impacted production. The Stalinist leadership established quotas on illnesses and deaths, and would not tolerate large numbers of non-working prisoners. The Stalinist leadership called this “labor therapy,” and believed in work as the key to convalescence. Although sickness, emaciation, and disability were widespread, Gulag officials concealed their existence. In the Gulag, illness was widespread, yet it remained largely untreated, concealed, and even criminalized.Less

Civil War Cybernetics: Medicine, Modernity, and the Intellectual Mechanics of Union

Susan-Mary Grant

in So Conceived and So Dedicated: Intellectual Life in the Civil War Era North

Through an analysis of newspaper accounts of Union medical care and frontline and home-front medical writings this chapter seeks to draw the experiences, expectations, and perceptions of Union ... More

Through an analysis of newspaper accounts of Union medical care and frontline and home-front medical writings this chapter seeks to draw the experiences, expectations, and perceptions of Union surgeons employed by the Army Medical Department into the broader intellectual, literary, and cultural responses to the Civil War. It argues that their perspective informed the development of a new national relationship between the soldier and the state, and that this found professional and public expression in the medical imperative to calibrate and count the true physical cost of the conflict. In effect, Union surgeons criticized even as they confirmed the nation’s technological and organizational progress during the Civil War. And although medical professionalization was a crucial component of the postwar scientific, managerial revolution through which the health of both the individual and the national body could be charted and improved, in their emphasis on medical failure rather than on military success during the Civil War Union surgeons challenged, indeed contradicted, the northern narrative of redemption through suffering in the cause of freedom.Less

Afterword

Julie K. Brown

in Health and Medicine on Display: International Expositions in the United States, 1876-1904

The four international expositions held between 1876 and 1904 in the United States showcased careful planning and preparation to ensure the public’s health. Applied forms of health and medicine were ... More

The four international expositions held between 1876 and 1904 in the United States showcased careful planning and preparation to ensure the public’s health. Applied forms of health and medicine were enacted in the expositions, and medical services were provided to cover the needs of personnel, exhibitors, and visitors and to control the spread of infectious disease. As the expositions increased in scale and complexity and involved more people over a longer period of time, medical departments found their responsibilities also expand exponentially. The shifting nature of expositions blurred the boundaries between commerce, education, and entertainment, presenting additional challenges to exhibitors.Less

Occupational Health Services

Tee L. Guidotti

in Global Occupational Health

The provision of occupational health services requires an organizational structure, basic equipment, procedures and facilities for providing care and trained people. Such an organization is called an ... More

The provision of occupational health services requires an organizational structure, basic equipment, procedures and facilities for providing care and trained people. Such an organization is called an occupational health service. Much of the delivery of occupational health services takes place in primary health care, where suitably-trained generalist health care providers deal with basic health care needs. Health care providers are usually physicians or nurses or sometimes specially trained heath care technicians. For many years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has had a policy of emphasizing primary care and using the primary health care system to coordinate public health and disease prevention, including occupational health services, in its policy of “Basic Occupational Health Services”. Larger and more complex organizations require specialized occupational health services. These specialized services are staffed or may call in consultations as needed by occupational physicians (physicians who are specially trained in occupational medicine), occupational health nurses (nurses who are specially trained in occupational health), occupational hygienists (experts in identifying and correcting occupational hazards), safety professionals (experts in preventing injury), ergonomists (experts in managing ergonomic issues or one of many other professions in occupational health. At the local level, individual plants may have an employee health service for their own employees. Often, occupational health professionals in the community provide needed services under a contract or other arrangement. Corporate medical departments are located in the headquarters of large employers and coordinate occupational health and other health issues throughout the enterprise.Less

“A New Era of Literature”

James P. Cousins

in Horace Holley: Transylvania University and the Making of Liberal Education in the Early American Republic

This chapter describes the earliest years of Horace’s presidency at Transylvania. Bostonians lamented his absence but celebrated his desire to bring education to the dark places of the American West. ... More

This chapter describes the earliest years of Horace’s presidency at Transylvania. Bostonians lamented his absence but celebrated his desire to bring education to the dark places of the American West. To accomplish this aim, Horace gathered a unique collection of instructors, including Bostonian John Everett; Italian émigré P. D. Mariano; former University of Pennsylvania medical professor Charles Caldwell; twenty-eight-year-old Granville Pattison, former lecturer at Glasgow’s Medical School; and famed naturalist Constantine Rafinesque. Horace’s early ideas and innovations brought nationwide attention and marginalized those who might work against his goals. His efforts included the publication of the Western Review, a literary magazine he hoped would grow to rival similar eastern periodicals. More significant, however, was the reestablishment of Transylvania’s Medical Department, which under Caldwell’s supervision became the centerpiece of Horace’s efforts at Transylvania.Less

Introduction: The Roots of Rehabilitation

in War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America

This chapter reports the origins of rehabilitation. “War's waste” was a turn of phrase that referred to the human remains of war as well as to the economic cost that the nation had to endure after ... More

This chapter reports the origins of rehabilitation. “War's waste” was a turn of phrase that referred to the human remains of war as well as to the economic cost that the nation had to endure after the battle was over. Rehabilitation was a way to repair social order after the chaos of war by (re)making men into producers of capital. The Army Medical Department stepped in rapidly to fill the legislative requirements for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation legislation resulted in the formation of entirely new, female-dominated medical subspecialties. This book explains how and why amputee patients became the gold standard of rehabilitation. Antipension proponents who wanted to bolster the virtues of rehabilitation frequently used success stories of amputee veterans who could appear cured. The Progressive reformers who legislated and instituted rehabilitation could not have imagined a more ideal disabled soldier-patient.Less

“The Happiness of Feeling Superior to a Lot of People”

Thomas Söderqvist

in Science as Autobiography: The Troubled Life of Niels Jern

This chapter focuses on Niels Jerne's internship; in the late 1940s he was a widower, the father of two sons, and a middle-aged man with a medical degree. He had only to go through his internship to ... More

This chapter focuses on Niels Jerne's internship; in the late 1940s he was a widower, the father of two sons, and a middle-aged man with a medical degree. He had only to go through his internship to be certified as a physician, though the staff at the Serum Institute had already begun calling him Dr. Jerne. On 1 February 1947, a week after his final examination, he started work in the medical department of Rigshospitalet. Judging from the lack of archival material for that year, the internship took most of his time. The night watches gave him leisure to read; receipts from bookstores indicate that he was devouring books as never before and, as usual, was hungry for everything: history, novels, philosophy.Less

Becoming a Seasoned Soldier

Kathryn Shively Meier

in Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia

This chapter discusses how soldiers constructed their own networks of environmental knowledge and health care outside of the military establishment in response to both their heightened susceptibility ... More

This chapter discusses how soldiers constructed their own networks of environmental knowledge and health care outside of the military establishment in response to both their heightened susceptibility to wartime disease environments and their dissatisfaction with the Medical Departments. Soldiers devised self-care routines based on prewar and wartime experience, the guidance and care of fellow soldiers, and the advice of civilians in and around the camps—often women and African Americans—and those who were more distant but communicated through newspapers and correspondence. Self-care often demonstrably improved physical health and morale.Less

Photography

David Seed, Stephen C. Kenny, and Chris Williams (eds)

in Life and Limb: Perspectives on the American Civil War

Most of this section consists of ‘Painful Looks: Reading Civil War Photographs’ by Mick Gidley, who examines the rise of photographs as a medical record of the Civil War and one which increasingly ... More

Most of this section consists of ‘Painful Looks: Reading Civil War Photographs’ by Mick Gidley, who examines the rise of photographs as a medical record of the Civil War and one which increasingly confronted the public with its carnage. The essay is supplemented with a contemporary account of Mathew Brady’s photographs which impressed with their ‘terrible distinctness.’ These pieces are juxtaposed to a section of contemporary photographs taken from the National Museum of Health and medicine, the Library of Congress and other sources.Less