Article
ID: CBB001252195

Biological Aging and Social Characteristics: Gerontology, the Baltimore City Hospitals, and the National Institutes of Health (2013)

unapi
Gerontology Public health Aging Hospitals and clinics 20th century United States Baltimore City Hospitals National Institute of Health (U.S.)

The intramural gerontological research program in the National Institutes of Health underwent a substantial growth after its creation within the precincts of the Baltimore City Hospitals in 1940. This paper analyzes its development and the associated problems of its early years. Gerontologists aimed at improving the social and economic life of the elderly through scientific research. With this aim in mind, they conducted various investigations using the indigent aged patients of the Baltimore City Hospitals. Yet the scientists of aging, who hoped to eliminate negative social factors that might bias their research and heighten the confusion between pathology and aging per se, eventually stopped using these patients in the hospital as human subjects. Instead they sought educated affluent subjects in order to eliminate the impact of poverty. By doing so, however, they introduced a new source of social bias to their work, especially within the novel project begun in 1958, the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. This article thus examines the context of the development of gerontologists' research by analyzing their agenda, institutional environment, and research subjects in the 1940s and the 1950s.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001252195/

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Authors & Contributors
Park, Hyung Wook
Stark, Laura
Yu, Han
Brad Bolman
Sivaramakrishnan, Kavita
Schäfer, Daniel
Journals
Social History of Medicine
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Social Studies of Science
Medizin, Gesellschaft, und Geschichte
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Journal of the History of Biology
Publishers
University of Houston
University of Chicago Press
Pickering & Chatto
IOS Press
ILR Press/Cornell University Press
Harvard University Press
Concepts
Public health
Aging
Gerontology
Medicine
Hospitals and clinics
Demography; population research
People
McCay, Clive Maine
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
Early modern
21st century
20th century, early
Places
United States
South Asia
England
Wales
France
Finland
Institutions
National Institute of Health (U.S.)
University of California, Davis. School of Veterinary Medicine. Radiobiology Laboratory
National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.)
United States. Public Health Service
National Cancer Institute (U.S.)
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
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