In 1878 a bill was submitted to Congress authorizing the President to review the proceedings of the court-martial which convicted Dr. Hammond, and, if justice demanded, to reinstate him. This measure was passed almost unanimously by the House and Senate. In August, 1879, it was approved by President Hayes, and, after inquiry, he restored Dr. Hammond to his place on the rolls of the army as Surgeon General and Brigadier General on the retired list.
Continue Reading »We have come to the conclusion, based on widespread investigation and experience, that this education for parenthood must be based upon the needs and demands of the people themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and desires of the submerged masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting any changes in the mores of the people. Such systems have in the past revealed their woeful inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into which the world has today drifted.
Continue Reading »S. Josephine Baker (1873 – 1945) — Public health pioneer, administrator and advocate for the poor and sick in New York City
Continue Reading »Two events which occurred at the end of 1936 may signify a turning-point in the birth-control movement in America. Together they denote the closing of one era—the era of pioneering, of preparation, of laying the foundation—and the beginning of another—an era of extensive research and clinical accomplishments.
Continue Reading »“What the skill and care of these devoted nurses has meant to thousands of the needy sick, of all ages, during these dark times, no statistics can reflect. Home nursing, such as ours, includes health education to the family as well as care to the patient. The charts and facts presented in this report enable those previously unfamiliar with our work to understand in some small measure the significance of the Service.”
Continue Reading »“Program of Assistance for the Crippled:” Radio address by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1931. “I want to talk, of course, about the big human side of relieving distress and helping people to get on their feet, but at the same time I think there is another phase of the broad question of looking after cripples to which some people have never given much thought–the financial side.”
Continue Reading »The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created by Executive Order #7034 on May 6, 1935. President Roosevelt had the authority for this Executive Order via the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. The WPA was created to offer direct government employment to the jobless. The unemployment rate was about 20% at the time the WPA was created. The WPA lasted until June 30, 1943. The unemployment rate then was possibly below 2%, with many Americans working in the armed services, defense industries, etc. The WPA–during it’s 8 years of existence–employed over 8.5 million different Americans, and reached peak employment of over 3.3 million in late 1938.
Continue Reading »Written by Michael Barga. “Some of the earliest sustained social service institutions and health care facilities in New York City were started by the sisters. Their allegiance to local Catholics in the city came in conflict with their obedience to their superiors … eventually leading to the establishment of a separate order recognized as the Sisters of Charity of New York (SCNY).”
Continue Reading »The great complexity of the modern medical institution, the extreme development of specialization, the multiple details required by clinic and ward administration, all combine to create a certain inevitable amount of confusion, overlapping, and delay. Where there are several professions working together, there are unavoidable duplications, gaps, and conflicts. Division of labor in the hospital has been carried to a degree where many of the activities have assumed an impersonal character, until the patient as an individual is lost to sight. Mechanical procedures and rigidities may develop until the very concept of the hospital’s purpose itself becomes narrowed. This means that it is at the same time both more important and more difficult for social case work to find and hold its own purpose in such a setting.
Continue Reading »The term hospital social service is unfortunately not a very specific term, as it has come to be used to include a great variety of extra-mural service to hospital and dispensary patients. It has been used to designate such a variety of functions as a simple follow-up system to keep track of patients’ attendance at clinics, friendly visiting in the wards, various phases of public health nursing, a variety of administrative functions at admission desks and in the clinics, and medical-social case work. The fact is that all these various types of service are coming to be recognized as necessary to the improvement of hospital and dispensary service. All of them recognize the necessity of individualizing the patients and taking into account some of the social elements in the patients’ situation. Before we can discuss hospital social work intelligently, we need more specific terminology and definition.
I shall not attempt that now but shall choose for discussion the contribution that was made to the efficiency of medical treatment by the introduction of the trained social worker into the staff of hospitals and dispensaries. Visiting nursing in the homes of dispensary patients antedated the present hospital social work movement by several years and still remains in many cities the long arm of the hospital extending skilled nursing service and hygiene teaching to the patients discharged from the hospital or under supervision of the dispensary. Such service has long been recognized as essential to baby welfare and tuberculosis clinics and has stimulated the development of public health nursing organization in most of our cities.
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