Public Health

Back in the early 1900s my grandmother worked in public health. Yes she was a Socialist, a major player as well, jailed by Woodrow Wilson for asking for the right to vote, but we leave that to the Democrats to sort out, I never liked him. But back to grandmother. From 1910 thru 1922 she worked in New York Public Health, dealing with TB patients at Sea View Hospital on Staten Island, and then handling the Influenza epidemic after WW I.

TB was and is highly contagious and quite often deadly. My other grandmother died of it at 27. Now grandmother Hattie went day after day to Sea View following standard protocols to prevent infection and over 12 years dealt with the then deadliest bacterial and viral diseases. The key, wash your hands, don't lean on things, and isolate patients. Medications were non-existent. Many patients survived.

The key was classic public health. People were educated. Facilities existed. Infected persons were quarantined and cared for. Public Health functioned. Regrettably today we do not have any real Public Health. The US Public Health Service, part of CDC, is a bureaucracy, no longer a working professional corps. We have a bloated and self important class of Government workers more worried about how their opinion will be accepted whereas a hundred years ago these people would be working. Managing the Public Health problems.

I guess we have gone backwards.