History

This is a comprehensive reference work which surveys all aspects of the history of medicine, both clinical and social, and reflects the complementary approaches to the discipline.

"What greater investment can a nation make than in the health of its children? Yet tragically, until the twentieth century nearly half of all children in the United States died before reaching adolescence." "The history of children's health in America - its evalutian from the rudimentary ministrations of colonial times to the comprehensive care afforded children today - is a fascinating story, not just of medical advances but of society's changing perspectives and emphases, and of the roles religion, philosophy, and science have played in children's health care."

In Health Care in America, historian John C. Burnham describes changes over four centuries of medicine and public health in America. Beginning with seventeenth-century concerns over personal and neighborhood illnesses, Burnham concludes with the arrival of a new epoch in American medicine and health care at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Erwin H. Ackerknecht's A Short History of Medicine is a concise narrative, long appreciated by students in the history of medicine, medical students, historians, and medical professionals as well as all those seeking to understand the history of medicine.

Americans' health improved dramatically over the twentieth century. Public health programs for disease and injury prevention were responsible for much of this advance. Over the century, America's public health system grew dramatically, employing science and political authority in response toan increasing array of health problems. As the disease burden of the old scourges of infection, perinatal mortality, and dietary deficiencies began to lift, public health's mandate expanded to take on new health threats, such as those resulting from a changing workplace, the rise of the automobile,and chronic and complex conditions caused by smoking, diet and other lifestyle and environmental factors. Public health measures almost always occur on contested ground; accordingly, controversies and recriminations over past failures often persist. In contrast, public health's many successes, eventhe imperfect ones, become part of the fabric of everyday life, a fact already apparent early in the last century, when C.E.A. Winslow reminded his peers that the lives saved and healthy years extended were the "silent victories" of public health.