Temple University School of Medicine - Skull Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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 L o. Back in the mid-19tK century, when Rudolf Virchow published Die Cellular Pathologic, the height of an exclusive viewpoint was attained. Men of medical science had been put ting on ever farrowing blinders While they probed ever deeper in sear h of causative agents of disease in individual patients. One consequence of tins focus was the exclusion from their thinking of the concept of disease affecting groups of people. For just as some colls in the body become diseased in carcinoma, so may some men become malignant in the community causing widespread decay and degeneration. Even today inodical men are prepared to spend their lives studying and treating individual diseases, but few feel the need to investigate and heal the ugly scars which deface any community — alcoholism. Malnutrition, social disease, sexual devi-ion and other abnormalities. If the pri-ate physician cannot or will not face these problems, then the hospital must become an agent for social betterment. Comprehensive Medicine is trying to promote awareness of this problem to physicians and at the same time is attempting to explore ways in which the hospital can help in its solution. nM»U U'-IVUUTJ ho;»ITAt rwitiwi -».i» m

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 The Emerging Concept in Medical Care The concept of the conscience” of the hospital is cf recent origin. More and more the coi imunity is depending on its hospitals for leadership and guidance in the bewildering search for medical help. Several reasons account for this: the reluctance of physicians to make house calls, the increasing sophistication of the population in regards to health matters, the moving of people into vast impersonal cities, the increasing cost of medical care. Often after a visit to the doctor’s office, another visit must be made to the hospital to have particular studies performed. This is why hospitals are assuming many duties formerly in the province of the general practitioner, why the emergency room is supplanting the house call, and why the hospital clinics are supplanting the doctor’s office. This increasing acceptance of and dependence on the hospital makes it mandatory for the hospital to pick up the challenge. No longer can it afford to remain entrenched behind high walls, aloof to all except those who seek its help. The community today is demanding that its hospitals. symbols of help and repositories of medical knowledge, lead the search for solution of the community’s medical and social ills. « —

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TRUSSES HARRY DOCTOR HOSPITAL .fr ? The North Philadelphia Project he North Philadelphia Project new and unique chapter in the incept of community health is w being written at Temple resulted in the North Philadelphia Project. This unique idea, which may well serve as a model for other University Medical Center. It began with Dr. Herman Niebuhr’s joining the Comprehensive Medicine program in the late 1950‘s. In 1961 he became the chief organizer of the Center for Community Studies, now located on the main campus of Temple University. As Chairman of the Center. he met with interested community leaders and drew up the Philadelphia Commission foi Community Advancement (P.C. C.A.). His coordination of diversified ideas into a workable plan and his personal diplomacy in obtaining financial endorsement from the United States Congres? and the Ford Foundation have major cities, emphasizes prevention rather than cure. The plan encompasses a comprehensive approach with combined effort In state, city and private philanthropic groups as organized into the Philadelphia Commission for Community Advancement. The present geographical boundaries of interest are the Delaware River on the east, the Schuykill River on the west, the northern fringe of the Center City business district on the south, and the Roosevelt Expressway-Frank-ford Creek on the north. Basically the program is an attempt to break the cycle of local economic dependency, educational underachievement, and family instability by investigating the complex network of developmental factors in order to find effective points of intervention. The program includes research, development and evaluation, which are not part of existing public welfare programs. Methodology will be derived and tested as the experiment progresses. The targets are delinquency, school dropouts, poor mental and physical health and