Second Annual History Night Features Fellows’ Research

On February 22, the NYAM Section on the History of Medicine and Public Health presented the second annual NYAM History Night meeting, featuring short talks on topics in the history of medicine and public health presented by four accomplished health care professionals.

Caitlin Hawke, Research Associate at Columbia University’s Hertog Global Strategy Initiative, presented on the topic “All Heroes on Deck: How Polio Rivals Salk & Sabin Were Deployed in the 1976 Swine Flu Campaign.”
 
Early in 1976, stricken by the fear of an impending flu pandemic, President Gerald R. Ford’s administration launched the most ambitious national influenza immunization program this country had ever seen. Polio vaccine pioneers and public rivals Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin were immediately deployed by the West Wing to legitimate the immunization campaign for the American public who regarded them as vaccination heroes. The administration hoped that the coup of uniting these two competitors to serve on behalf of the flu effort would help to propel the campaign forward. Ms. Hawke explained how the Swine Flu program instead became an arena where Salk and Sabin continued to wage their personal battle on the question of whose polio vaccine technology was superior.

Karen G. Langer, PhD, Manager of Psychosocial Services at the NYU Clinical Cancer Center and Clinical Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, spoke on “Babinski’s Anosognosia for Hemiplegia in Early Twentieth-Century French Neurology.”
 
In 1914, the French Neurologist Joseph Babinski first described “anosognosia,” a term he coined for a phenomenon involving unawareness of disability in hemiplegia (paralysis following stroke). Babinski recorded with clinical precision the often peculiar accounts and explanations of patients for their condition. The syndrome and its manifestations are the basis of current theoretical considerations regarding conscious awareness. Historical overview of the development of diverse perspectives on anosognosia, Dr. Langer explained, enriches our contemporary understanding of patterns of denial in illness and unawareness of disability. 

Sandra B. Lewenson, EdD, RN, FAAN, a professor at the Pace University Lienhard School of Nursing, focused on “Public Health Nurses: American Red Cross Public Health Nursing Service, 1912-1947.”
 
Dr. Lewenson’s study examines the history of the American Red Cross Public Health Nursing Service (1912-1947) that was known as the Red Cross Town and Country Nursing Service in its early years. This new service brought public health nursing into rural areas that typically lacked this service. The Town and Country organized existing visiting nurse organizations, fostered the development of public health nursing services in communities that lacked such services, and standardized the work of these nurses to function in rural settings. Historical evidence about the earlier efforts of the Town and Country Nursing Service gives insight into the dichotomy between urban and rural public health nursing and the specific needs of those practicing in more rural settings.

Sharon Packer, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, presented her research on “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: A Commentary on WWI Shell-Shock and Electro-Shock?” The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) is often hailed as the finest example of German Expressionist film, but it is also important to the histories of psychiatry and medicine. Dr. Caligari himself is considered to be the prototype of sinister cinema psychiatrists who are sicker than their patients; the charlatan-hypnotist and pseudo-psychiatrist has been compared to WWI German psychiatrists who sent shell-shocked soldiers back to the front, after subjecting them to painful electric shocks known as “Kaufmannization.” By returning these servicemen to combat, Dr. Packer explained, the doctors essentially commanded their patients to kill, in the same way that the fictional Dr. Caligari commands his somnambulist Cesare to kill on his behalf, after he hypnotizes him. At a time when PTSD among returning military personnel is a growing concern, and often fails to respond to treatment, it is interesting to review “electrical” approaches to “shell-shock” and war neurosis from the Great War, and see why they are immortalized in Dr. Caligari’s horrific character in this silent film classic. 

Sandra Lewenson, Karen Langer, Caitlin Hawke, Sharon Packer

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Posted on February 23, 2012

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