
The War Against Tuberculosis
Samuel G. Dixon and the Rise of Modern Public Health in Pennsylvania
James E. Higgins
The War Against Tuberculosis
Samuel G. Dixon and the Rise of Modern Public Health in Pennsylvania
James E. Higgins
“James E. Higgins rightfully brings to the fore the life and career of Samuel G. Dixon, someone largely known as a member of the tuberculosis sanitarium movement. As Higgins demonstrates, Dixon was so much more, from his exemplary and important research agenda to his most important role as founder and leader of a powerful state health department. No hagiography, Higgins’s deeply researched and lively book introduces a prominent figure to the public health history canon.”
- Description
- Reviews
- Bio
- Table of Contents
- Sample Chapters
- Subjects
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 rightfully brings to the fore the life and career of Samuel G. Dixon, someone largely known as a member of the tuberculosis sanitarium movement. As Higgins demonstrates, Dixon was so much more, from his exemplary and important research agenda to his most important role as founder and leader of a powerful state health department. No hagiography, Higgins’s deeply researched and lively book introduces a prominent figure to the public health history canon.”
James E. Higgins is the author of The Health of the Commonwealth: A Brief History of Medicine, Public Health, and Disease in Pennsylvania.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Town and Country Beginnings
2. Medical Beginnings
3. A Chance Discovery
4. Dixon and Koch
5. Building a New Academy
6. Dixon and His Department of Health
7. Dixon’s War on Tuberculosis
8. The Department Ascendant
Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction.
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