Public Health

“Especially significant was the break, in the early twentieth century, between doctors in private or hospital practice and those working in government. The former, represented by . . . the American Medical Association, claimed authority over the domain of patient care and vehemently opposed any initiative to provide clinical services in the public section. The notable exception was care for expectant mothers and their infants . . . Local health department were also left with responsibility for a few necessary but unglamorous categories of care that the medical profession disdained to provide: services for the indigent, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and control of once-epidemic but rapidly dwindling contagions such as tuberculosis and smallpox. . . . the growth of local public health was halting and uneven: as late as World War II, one-third of the U.S. population lived in an area that was not served by a full-time health official” (Colgrove, III, Intro).