War Against Tuberculosis

Regular price €31.99
A01=James E. Higgins
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_James E. Higgins
automatic-update
bacteriology
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BGH
Category=BGT
Category=DNBT
Category=HBJK
Category=HBTB
COP=United States
Delivery_Pre-order
Dixon
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_non-fiction
eugenics
germ theory
human subject testing
laboratory research
Language_English
Louis Pasteur
PA=Not yet available
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
polio
Price_€20 to €50
Progressive era
PS=Forthcoming
Robert Koch
sanatoria
softlaunch
technocrat
tuberculin
Tuberculosis
University of Pennsylvania

Product details

  • ISBN 9780271099224
  • Weight: 318g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 28 Jan 2025
  • Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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In 1905, sanitary conditions in Pennsylvania were appalling. Thousands of children died of preventable and curable diseases, tens of thousands in the coal regions hacked themselves to death from black lung disease, and pollution in the commonwealth’s water killed tens of thousands more. In the wake of an alarming typhoid outbreak in Butler, the Pennsylvania legislature formed a modern state department of health. At its head was Samuel G. Dixon, who would rise to fame as one of the most respected public health experts of his day.

While the legislation that created Pennsylvania’s department of health cleared space for its aggressive action, it was Dixon’s deft political touch and keen insight that enabled the department to avoid destruction at the hands of a people notoriously hostile to government encroachment. As commissioner, Dixon constructed the world’s largest, most sophisticated system of tuberculosis controls, with thousands of beds in three great sanatoria. As his reputation grew, Dixon was recognized as one of the nation’s greatest public health reformers and a champion of technology as the answer to great societal problems. At the same time, Dixon was a eugenicist who helped author a marriage law prohibiting unions between the diseased, those with intellectual disabilities or psychiatric disorders, alcoholics, and the “unfit.”

This compelling history of Pennsylvania’s first commissioner of public health provides a fascinating view into the changes wrought by germ theory and the public health efforts that stemmed from it during the Progressive Era in the United States.

James E. Higgins is the author of The Health of the Commonwealth: A Brief History of Medicine, Public Health, and Disease in Pennsylvania.