Harvard School of Public Health - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

Page 10 text:

INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE SILVERMAN, FIRST, YAGLOU, MC FARLAND, AMDUR, DRINKER WILLIAMS, THOMSON The basement at 55 Shattuck Street makes one think of those sections of a museum not open to the public. Visitors for the first time see an intricate outlay of laboratories and strange equipment whose utility is not immediately apparent (unless Mr. Thomson is there to explain). Yet the benefits coming from this Department of Industrial Hygiene have spread to class rooms, shipyards, ships, wards, steel mills, mines and factories of all kinds in many countries. Around Professor Drinker, an engineer, a group of engineers and phy¬ sicians cooperate in achieving the broad objectives of Occupational Health including prevention, diagnosis and treatment of occupational diseases as well as appraisal and control of working environment. The main courses are given inclose cooperation with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Physiology and the Massachusetts General Hospital. Research ranges from creation of desirable atmos¬ pheric conditions for miners and premature babies to development of masks and respirators, accident prevention and studies of air contam¬ inants and radiation. Publications from the Department are known the world over, especially the books by Drinker, McFarland and Hamilton and Hardy. Professor Drinker is also Editor of the Archives of Indus¬ trial Hygiene and Occupational Medicine. -10-

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EPIDEMIOLOGY O’ROURKE, INGALLS. PHILBROOK. GORDON. TAYLOR. RUBENSTEIN, PUGH The Department of Epidemiology was established in 1922 with Dr. Milton J. Rosenau as Head of the Department. Upon Dr. Rosenau ' s retirement he was succeeded by Brigadier General F rede rick F. Russell and in 1938 by Dr. John E. Gordon, the present Professor of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology. The Department has as its principal objectives: (1) to provide basic postgraduate training in epidemiology for students of public health; (2) to train a limited number of specialists in epidemiology; (3) to con¬ duct epidemiologic investigations of mass disease; (4) to conduct field studies and provide consultation for operating public health agencies and industry. Current research activities include the fields of congenital anomalies, alcoholism, diarrheas and dysenteries, accidents and whooping cough. -9-

Page 11 text:

MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH STANDING PYLE. DOOLEY, FITZGERALD, QUENEAU. BUKER, KIRKWOOD. BUTLER. GRANT SEATED: BURKE, RICE. BERNSTEIN. SCHMIDT, VARLEY, STUART Shortly after the organization of the School, the beginning of our present Department was formulated as a result of a series of lectures on the subject of child hygiene which were given in the Department of Public Health Practice. These lectures were given by Dr. Richard M. Smith, who was in charge of the course, and by guest lecturers. About 1928 it became evident that the field of child hygiene and special health problems of the infant and child were of such importance to public health as to jus¬ tify more extensive training in this field and to justify establishing re¬ search relating to child health. At that time Dr. Harold C. Stuart joined the faculty to organize a division of child health within the Department of Public Health Practice. During the next few years, it became obvious that problems of maternal health were inseparable from those of child health, that the concept of hygiene was too restricted and that there was need for a Department to study intens ively the health problems of mo the rs, infants and children and the services required by these special groups within the framework of public health. Hence, a Department of Maternal and Child Health was organized under the direction of Dr. Stuart. In 1947 a training program for specialists in the field of maternal and child health was started in the School under support from the U.S. Children ' s Bureau. On the basis of this development the Department now has a relatively large staff of highly competent workers from dif¬ ferent disciplines whose services are required in the maternal and child health field. More recently the staff has been occupied in developing adequate field units for training purposes as well as for more intensive research particularly concerned with the maternaUewborrv-infant period. -11-