Environment and health : problems of environmental health in the United States and the Public Health Service programs which aid States and communities in their efforts to solve such problems.

  • United States Public Health Service
Date:
1951
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Environment and health : problems of environmental health in the United States and the Public Health Service programs which aid States and communities in their efforts to solve such problems. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Winogradsky isolated nitrifying organisms, and his work was confirmed at Lawrence. In addition to these basic contributions in water sanitation, re- search just prior to the turn of the twentieth century had un- covered basic facts about the transmission of disease by food and various carriers. Sir Ronald Ross and Walter Reed pinned down the mode of insect transmission of malaria and yellow fever. Bac- teriology made such contributions to the sanitation of milk that the process of heating milk to kill germs was named for Pasteur. The Lawrence Experiment Station was to sanitary engineers what the Pasteur Institute was to bacteriologists: a center of knowledge, experiment, and training for the profession. And though sanitary engineers dealt primarily with the purification of water and the treatment of sewage, their special skills and knowl- edge were soon pressed into service for milk sanitation, control of disease-carrying vermin, industrial hygiene, and similar environ- mental problems. By the turn of the century, health workers, assisted by advances in chemistry, were achieving competence to deal effectively with most epidemics. Chlorination, pasteurization, and insect and rodent control, all developed in the twentieth century, reduced infection’s annual toll. It now is possible for millions to enjoy the conveniences of city life in surroundings that are cleaner and safer than ever in the past. There is little opportunity to rest on this triumph, however. Technological advances which have helped to conquer most in- fections also have created other problems. These relate to oc- cupational and household hazards; international rather than local of noise, speed, light, congestion, and associated stimuli in the modern environment; chemical contamination; food processing; environmental influences which afflict an aging population par- ticularly; protection for travelers; application of sanitary meas- ures in areas suffering disaster; air pollution; recreational im- provements; water uses; popular education in modern health techniques; air conditioning; substandard housing; and the vol- ume and healthfulness of the water supply. On the whole, modern problems are less bound up with preventing sickness than with promoting health. Meanwhile, new instruments and knowledge have been developed to assist the health worker. The Delft school advanced the study of biochemistry. Fleming, Florey, Waksman, and others devel- oped bactericidal fungi. The electron microscope expanded re- search in virology. DDT was applied to insects, warfarin to rats, and 2,4-D to ragweed. The World Health Organization, founded by the United Nations, established international standards for health reports. A system of examinations was introduced to survey community health rapidly and economically. And these are only a sampling of the work that is contributing to the public health today. How the Public Health Service shares in this work is described in the pages that follow. The Service has'the responsibility of carrying on, stimulating, and fostering research; of supporting the work of State and local health agencies, which bear most of the burden of administration. The contribution to date is a matter of public pride: its measure is the margin between prosperity and destitution, between civilization and barbarism.
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