Tag: public health
-
Vespasian toilets
Titus Flavius Vespasianus became Roman emperor in AD 69 following the death of Nero and the brief reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Remembered for his conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by his son Titus, Vespasian set about to restore the damage and destruction the city and its empire had…
-
Book review: Understanding the NHS
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The National Health Service in the United Kingdom was founded in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan, a Welsh Labour Party politician and health minister in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government. Bevan was a coal miner before entering Parliament in 1928. He had long campaigned for a free health service for all…
-
Dr. Joycelyn Elders: An unwelcome prophet
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “No prophet is welcome in his hometown.”— The Gospel of Saint Luke, 4:24. New American Standard Bible Joycelyn Elders, MD (b. 1933) was Surgeon General of the United States of America from 1993 to 1994. She was the second woman and the first Black person to have that position. Her life story…
-
The germ of laziness
Enrique Chaves-Carballo Overland Park, Kansas, United States Charles Wardell Stiles (1867-1941). Parasitologist, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Portrait ca. 1912. Wikimedia Commons Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation was chartered on June 1909 “to promote the well-being and to advance the civilization of the peoples of the United States and its territories and possessions and of…
-
A wrong time to die
Anthony Papagiannis Thessaloniki, Greece Lockdown in Thessaloniki. Photo by the author. Death is the one absolute and unexceptional certainty in life. In the Bible we read that there is a time for everything, including a time to die [Ecclesiastes 3:2]. Is there ever a “right” time to die? Faced with such a question, we…
-
Mortality data, risk probability, and the psychology of assent in the enlightenment smallpox debate
David Spadafora Pinehurst, North Carolina Nicolas de Largillière, Portrait of Voltaire, ca. 1724. Source. The present health crisis is hardly the first to provoke significant controversy about preventing and treating widespread disease. Debate over epidemic-related data, its reliability, and its uses has a long history. So does concern about the psychological elements involved in…
-
Milwaukee’s unlikely public health advocate
Lea DacyRochester, MN, United States The story of my mother’s possible childhood episode of pertussis (also known as whooping cough) has lived on in family lore because of its link with a notorious legendary figure in Milwaukee history. One Sunday afternoon, Helen Cromell (she later changed it to Cromwell), or “Dirty Helen” as she is…
-
Occupational lung malignancies: role of malachite
Tamas F. Molnar Katalin Aknai Hungary Jackson Pollock, Miners, ca. 1934-1938, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1966.68. To this very day, malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) remains a serious oncologic, public health, and industrial challenge, a fatal disease in which standard chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy has done little to increase…
-
Revisiting the “Trolley Problem” in the COVID-19 pandemic
Margaret B. Mitchell Boston, Massachusetts, United States Graham M. Attipoe Nashville, Tennessee, United States Bridge situation. John Holbo. 2010. CC BY-NC 2.0. Via Flickr The “Trolley Problem” Originally described by Philipa Foot in 1967, the “Trolley Problem” is an ethical dilemma commonly taught in philosophy that challenges participants to explore how far they would…