Public Health Reports and ASPH Publish Historical Collection of 20th Century Public Health Discoveries, Disasters and Triumphs

“On March 6, 1900, a Chinese laborer was found dead in the basement of a hotel in San Francisco’s Chinatown. An autopsy by local health authorities suggested the presence of the plague bacilli. This marked the official arrival of the plague in San Francisco, and led the local board of health to impose an unprecedented complete quarantine on Chinatown.”

This passage, excerpted from a commentary introducing a 1919 article titled “The Plague in San Francisco” is included in a new collection of seminal public health articles published by Public Health Reports, the official journal of the U.S. Surgeon General, in conjunction with the Association of Schools of Public Health.

Public Health Reports: Historical Collection 1878-2005, available now in a special hard-back edition, includes 35 important public health articles published during the 127-year existence of Public Health Reports. “In this important collection we can trace the extraordinary journey public health has taken over the course of the past 125 years,” writes Dr. David Rosner director of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health Center for History & Ethics of Public Health, in his foreword to the book. “The articles in this volume are a testament to the history of the public health community as well as to the vibrancy of the Journal that has so closely tracked its history.”

Articles included in the collection are by such pioneering authors as Joseph Goldberger, Charles Wardell Stiles, Benjamin S. Warren, Wade Hampton Frost and C. Everett Koop. The chronologically arranged articles address significant public health issues such as plague, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, typhus fever, influenza, milk sanitation, immigration, the Salk polio vaccine, the health consequences of smoking and AIDS.

Articles dating to the early 20th century, address issues still confronting the world today. “The interest manifested by the medical profession and by health officials in the proposals for governmental health insurance in this country is as commendable as it is necessary,” writes Benjamin S. Warren, assistant U.S. surgeon general, and Edgar Sydenstricker, public health statistician, of the U.S. Public Health Service, in a prophetic 1919 article, “Health Insurance, The Medical Profession and the Public Health.”

In addition to providing original articles, photos, charts, tables and graphs, the collection includes introductory commentaries written by many of today’s leaders in public health. Commentators include university deans and faculty members of universities around the country, as well as historians and government officials.

“Fifty years ago, facing an epidemic of paralysis and death, our nation rallied to provide an effective polio vaccine,” writes U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman in his introduction to “Poliomyelitis Vaccination,” published in 1955 by Alexander D. Langmuir. “The world now stands on the brink of the total elimination of human transmission of polio…Such a triumph would send a resounding message about how much vaccination has already and can yet accomplish.”

Public Health Reports: Historical Collection 1878-2005 was published with a grant from the National Library of Medicine to celebrate their digitalization of Public Health Reports in its entirety, says Dr. Robert Rinsky, the Journal’s editor. The full archives of the Journal will appear on PubMed Central this spring in a fully searchable format allowing researchers to easily find the important information Public Health Reports has offered the field of public health over the past 127 years.

“It is mesmerizing to read the notions and considerations of the great public health practitioners past,” notes Dr. Rinsky. “With present-day clarification provided by the introductory commentaries, the lessons are priceless. But the best is that this volume represents only a sample of what awaits discovery in the PHR archive. We hope that the readers of this collection will be encouraged to launch their own expedition through the past in Public Health Reports.”

A sample of historical photos from the book can be downloaded at http://www.asph.org/UserFiles/Historical%20Collection%20Photos.pdf.

The collection is available as a limited-edition hard-cover book that can be purchased for $40 each. The full collection will also appear as a supplement to the March/April 2006 issue of Public Health Reports, which will be distributed at no cost to Journal subscribers and can be purchased separately for $20. Upon request, the collection can be purchased as a CD-ROM for $10.

To order Public Health Reports: Historical Collection 1878-2005, download an order form at www.publichealthreports.org, or contact Asha Tobing at atobing@asph.org or (202) 296-1099.
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