Contributions to Medical Science Developed under the Auspices of the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board

1921 ◽  
Vol s1-1 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
William F. Snow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Hygiene

From Tent Meetings and Store-front Healing Rooms to Walmarts and the Internet: Healing Spaces in the United States, the Americas, and the World, 1906–2006

2006 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candy Gunther Brown
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Spiritual Healing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
The World

The centennial of the Azusa Street revivals of 1906 provides us with convenient poles for charting shifts in the landscape of Christian spiritual healing practices during the past century. Alongside unprecedented achievements in medical science, nearly 80 percent of Americans report believing that God supernaturally heals people in answer to prayer. Individuals who need healing, even after trying the best medical cures, readily transgress ecclesiastical, physical, and social boundaries in their quest for health and wholeness. The promise of a tangible experience of divine power, moreover, presents an attractive alternative to seekers disillusioned with what they perceive as the callous materialism of medical science and the religious legalism of traditional Christian churches. This essay calls for new narratives of sacred space that map the ways that pentecostal and charismatic healing practices have proliferated, diversified, and sacralized a growing number and variety of physical, social, and linguistic spaces in the past hundred years. At the turn of the twentieth century, modernist epistemological assumptions that privileged reason over experience encouraged fine intellectual distinctions between the sacred and the secular. In esteeming bodily experience as more trustworthy than disembodied doctrine and in resisting linguistic binaries as culturally constructed, postmodern epistemologies have multiplied the number and range of places available to be endowed with sacred meanings. I argue that boundaries between the sacred and the secular are dissolving at the same time that new boundaries are being established, privileging particular places and defining a new relationship among the United States, the Americas, and the world.

scholarly journals Breast Cancer and the Politics of Abortion in the United States

2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 423-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Jasen
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
United States ◽  
Breast Cancer Risk ◽  
Cancer Risk ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Reproductive Factors ◽  
The United States ◽  
Specific Factor ◽  
The Us

Epidemiology, like any branch of medical science, functions within a social and historical context. That context influences what questions are asked, how they are investigated, and how their conclusions are interpreted, both by researchers and by the public. The international debate over whether abortion increases breast cancer risk, which has been the subject of many studies and much heated controversy in recent decades, became so intensely politicized in the United States that it serves as a particularly stark illustration of how elusive the quest for scientific certainty can be. Although a growing interest in reproductive factors and breast cancer risk developed after the Second World War, it was not until the early 1980s, after induced abortion had been legalized in many countries, that studies began to focus on this specific factor. In the US these were the years following Roe v Wade, when anti-abortionists mounted their counterattack and pro-choice forces were on the defensive. As a result, epidemiologists found themselves at the centre of a debate which had come to symbolize a deepening divide in American culture. This paper traces the history of the scientific investigation of the alleged abortion-breast cancer link, against the backdrop of what was increasingly termed an “epidemic” of breast cancer in the US. That history, in turn, is closely intertwined with the anti-abortion movement's efforts, following the violence of the early 1990s, to regain respectability through changing its tactics and rhetoric, which included the adoption of the “ABC link” as part of its new “women-centred” strategy.

AIDS and the Actuary

1993 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-231
Author(s):  
M. G. Kerr
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Financial Health ◽  
Potential Source ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
Major Increase ◽  
Fair Degree

Throughout this century we have become accustomed to regular improvement in mortality rates at most ages. For life office actuaries this trend could be regarded as a potential source of profit for assurance business, but as a possible source of loss for annuities. However, since the movements in mortality were gradual then mortality rates at any given time could be estimated with a fair degree of confidence.In this relatively stable environment, there was little concern over the first report of a death caused by complete and unaccountable failure of the immune system in the United States of America in 1981. When the number of such deaths began to grow and to migrate to Europe than actuaries had to take notice. Here was a disease (called AIDS) which was causing deaths at an alarmingly increasing rate and which medical science seemed powerless to counter. Concern grew about the effect which a major increase in mortality rates caused by AIDS would have on the financial health of life offices.

scholarly journals California and the 1918–1920 Influenza Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-36
Author(s):  
Diane M. T. North
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virus Spread ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Installations

The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic remains the deadliest influenza pandemic in recorded history. It started in the midst of World War I and killed an estimated 50–100 million people worldwide, many from complications of pneumonia. Approximately 500 million, or one-third of the world's population, became infected. In the United States, an estimated 850,000 died. The exceptionally contagious, unknown strain of influenza virus spread rapidly and attacked all ages, but it especially targeted young adults (ages twenty to forty-four). This essay examines the evolution of four waves of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, emphasizes the role of the U.S. Navy and sea travel as the initial transmitters of the virus in the United States, and focuses on California communities and military installations as a case study in the response to the crisis. Although the world war, limited medical science, and the unknown nature of the virus made it extremely difficult to fight the disease, the responses of national, state, and community leaders to the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic can provide useful lessons in 2020, as the onslaught of COVID-19 forces people worldwide to confront a terrible illness and death.

Bryan Ausin McSwiney 1894-1947

1948 ◽  
Vol 6 (17) ◽  
pp. 146-160
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Medical Officer ◽  
The United States ◽  
Final Choice ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
Original Intention ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
Medical Tradition ◽  
Short Time

Bryan Austin McSwiney was born in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., on 20 May 1894. His father was William Francis McSwiney, originally of Dublin, who had emigrated to the United States in 1890. He spent most of his childhood in the States and in 1907 he was sent to Ireland to finish his education. He entered Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, and stayed there until he was sixteen. He is remembered there, in the words of the school magazine, as a ‘cheery American boy . . . and the possessor of a deadly base-ball shy which was absolutely devastating on the cricket field’. In later years he had less opportunity to demonstrate his prowess in this direction, but some of it persisted in his service at tennis which remained sufficiently devastating until his activity in this direction was cut short by a ruptured tendon of the gastrocnemius. After leaving school he spent a year of study in Germany, a short time in the United States, and in 1912 returned to Ireland to continue his education at Trinity College, Dublin. His final choice of medicine seems to have been largely accidental. Some distant relatives had been medical men, notably a second cousin who as ship’s medical officer lost his life in the Titanic disaster, but there was no particular medical tradition in his family. His original intention had, in fact, been to study law, but, when discussing the financial difficulties of pursuing this course, he was advised by a shipboard acquaintance to try his hand at medicine. This advice he fortunately took and clearly found to his liking for he soon distinguished himself, being awarded the Reuben Harvey Memorial prize for an essay on creatine and creatinine. The essay appeared in print in 1915 in the Dublin Journal of Medical Science and constitutes his first published paper.

Advances in Clinical Chemistry, Vol. I,

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-737
Author(s):  
M. M. GRUMBACH
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Clinical Significance ◽  
Clinical Chemistry ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Literature ◽  
Initial Volume ◽  
Recent Advances

In this initial volume of a new series of "Advances," the editors state in the preface that their aim "is to provide a readable account of selected important developments [in clinical chemistry], of their roots in the allied fundamental disciplines, and of their impact upon the progress of medical science." The editors have drawn on eminent authorities from Australia, Sweden and Switzerland as well as Great Britain and the United States to contribute nine chapters on a wide variety of subjects. The reviews, which in general are of exceptional quality, provide a critical evaluation of important advances in methods of analysis and their clinical significance. In addition to much useful information on analytic techniques of value to the investigator, the reviews contain a wealth of information clearly and succinctly presented which reflect the authors' thorough syntheses of recent advances in their special fields. The extensive bibliographies include a large number of references in the foreign literature.

DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION IN CANCER MEDICINE

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 259-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAROL SIKORA
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Chronic Disease ◽  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Global Innovation ◽  
Fundamental Biology ◽  
Cancer Medicine ◽  
Made In

Great strides have been made in the field of cancer medicine towards understanding the fundamental biology of cancers. Impressive treatments have emerged, resulting in markedly prolonged survival for many patients. These advances mean that, within the next 20 years, cancer could become a chronic disease rather than a death warrant. But that promise depends on sustained investment in innovation, and on society's willingness to pay for that innovation. Realising this promise might be a problem for Europe where investment in medical science remains low compared to the United States which is driving global innovation in cancer technology (providing 55% of global funding for cancer although it only has 5% of the global cancer population) and where innovation is rewarded. If Europe is to continue to play a leading role in cancer medicine, it needs greater investment in R&D with an environment that supports and rewards innovation.

Science and Medicine in the United States of America

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Ramsden
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biomedical Sciences ◽  
Democratic State

This article begins with great optimism expressed by Tocqueville for America's future as the embodiment of the democratic state. It discusses the opportunity to express the liberal political ideals, arguing that its success was based on a community of common sensibility. An understanding of society and politics endowed the historian with the power to help remake health care. This article explores and compares the ways in which medicine is developed and applied in a number of different social, cultural, and physical contexts. It shows rapid growth, from a period in which European ideas, methods, and structures were adapted to the American context, to one in which the United States is at the forefront of large-scale initiatives in public health, disease control, and innovation in the biomedical sciences. Finally, it mentions the contradiction, most notably between profound faith in the technical capacities of medical science and equally profound dissatisfaction with the provision of health care.

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