Topic: History of Public Health

“My body was shaking uncontrollably, my teeth were chattering,” remembered Nathan Leopold. “You think from moment to moment that your head is going to split, and you wish to gosh it would!”Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Life Plus 99 Years (Greenwood Press, 1974), 321. Describing the viciousness of the malaria with which he was purposely infected in…

Working to change US medical education was one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s biggest endeavors in the 1910s and 1920s, extending from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to Beijing, China.

Programs designed to build public health infrastructure, eradicate disease, and increase access to healthcare have formed the core of more than a hundred years of one foundation’s strategy.

A foundation set on eradicating mosquito-born diseases had to accept that disease control was good enough.

Global war drew a new philanthropy into relief work.

Key points in the history of American foundations’ engagement with public health.

Philanthropy’s role in cleaning up the milk supply prompted better federal food safety protections.

A hundred years ago, hookworm disease was an epidemic across the US South. Northern philanthropy tried to help.

Century-old tips to prevent infection still make sense today.

Battling hookworm on rural farms laid the groundwork for a global public health system.