“In the Course of Routine Analysis”: Re-Envisioning Research in State Departments of Health, 1920--1940 (2015)
Shapiro-Shapin, Carolyn (Author)
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Volume: 70, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 333-364
During the interwar years, 1919--1939, State Department of Health (DOH) laboratories from around the United States provided scientific leadership and dedicated bench work to support the development of standardized laboratory technique. One important focus of the work was syphilis testing. In recent years, historians have explored the heated arguments and international debates surrounding the development of standardized methods. This article adds State Departments of Health to the venues in which scientists performed valuable research aimed at standardizing and improving analytic procedures. I argue that the research conducted in DOH laboratories to provide Progressive Era public health officials with accurate and efficient tools to control syphilis and other infectious diseases required significant innovation, international cooperation, and scientific creativity from scientists deeply engaged in multiple research projects. These endeavors offer an instructive venue for historians to begin to re-envision DOH laboratories as vibrant sites for scientific research, where work on standard methods was an enterprise of discovery and innovation.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Hardy, Anne;
(2014)
Scientific Strategy and Ad Hoc Response: The Problem of Typhoid in America and England, C. 1910--50
(/isis/citation/CBB001214576/)
Book
Risse, Guenter B.;
(2012)
Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco's Chinatown
(/isis/citation/CBB001210084/)
Book
Willrich, Michael;
(2011)
Pox: An American History
(/isis/citation/CBB001212485/)
Article
Bay, Alexander R.;
(2012)
Nation from the Bottom up: Disease, Toilets and Waste Management in Prewar Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB001214343/)
Book
Polu, Sandhya L.;
(2012)
Infectious Disease in India, 1892--1940: Policy-Making and the Perception of Risk
(/isis/citation/CBB001252076/)
Book
Fairchild, Amy L.;
Bayer, Ronald;
Colgrove, James;
(2007)
Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America
(/isis/citation/CBB000953218/)
Article
Webb, James L. A., Jr.;
(2011)
The First Large-Scale Use of Synthetic Insecticide for Malaria Control in Tropical Africa: Lessons from Liberia, 1945--1962
(/isis/citation/CBB001034285/)
Book
Wolters, Christine;
(2011)
Tuberkulose und Menschenversuche im Nationalsozialismus: Das Netzwerk hinter den Tbc-Experimenten im Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen
(/isis/citation/CBB001202027/)
Book
McCrea, Heather L.;
(2010)
Diseased Relations: Epidemics, Public Health, and State-Building in Yucatán, Mexico, 1847--1924
(/isis/citation/CBB001200622/)
Book
Humphries, Mark Osborne;
(2013)
The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada
(/isis/citation/CBB001420164/)
Article
Arner, Katherine;
(2013)
Making Global Commerce into International Health Diplomacy: Consuls and Disease Control in the Age of Revolutions
(/isis/citation/CBB001201444/)
Article
Espinosa, Mariola;
(2015)
The Caribbean Origins of the National Public Health System in the Usa: A Global Approach to the History of Medicine and Public Health in Latin America
(/isis/citation/CBB001552727/)
Book
Fanning, Patricia J.;
(2010)
Influenza and Inequality: One Town's Tragic Response to the Great Epidemic of 1918
(/isis/citation/CBB001212737/)
Article
Wingfield, Nancy M.;
(2013)
The Enemy Within: Regulating Prostitution and Controlling Venereal Disease in Cisleithanian Austria during the Great War
(/isis/citation/CBB001201829/)
Thesis
Polu, Sandhya Lakshmi;
(2009)
The Perception of Risk: Policy-Making on Infectious Disease in India (1892--1940)
(/isis/citation/CBB001562846/)
Article
Jones, M.;
(2000)
The Ceylon malaria epidemic of 1934--35: A case study in colonial medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB000111976/)
Book
Brier, Jennifer;
(2009)
Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB001200310/)
Article
Cooper, D.;
(2012)
The Licensing of German Drug Patents Confiscated during World War I: Federal and Private Efforts to Maintain Control, Promote Production, and Protect Public Health
(/isis/citation/CBB001252817/)
Article
Poblete, Joanna;
(2013)
The S. S. Mongolia Incident: Medical Politics and Filipino Colonial Migration in Hawaii
(/isis/citation/CBB001200326/)
Article
Higgins, Jim;
(2014)
B. Franklin Royer: A Half Century in Public Health
(/isis/citation/CBB001450304/)
Be the first to comment!