1930's Medicine and Health | "Preventing Disease in the Nation"

Letter

By: Joseph E. Ransdell

Date: August 4, 1931

Source: Ransdell, Joseph E. "Preventing Disease in the Nation." The New York Times, August 4, 1931.

About the Author: Joseph E. Ransdell, a U.S. senator from Louisiana, wrote the Ransdell Act, which transformed the National Hygienic Laboratory into the National Institute of Health. Ransdell was a proponent of publicly funded biomedical research, and he joined forces with scientists who also believed in the creation of an institute to supply such funding.

Introduction

The U.S. government has had a role in medical research since 1887. The first small institution was the Marine Hospital Institute (MHI), created to provide health care for merchant seamen. The physicians who worked there also screened arriving passengers for signs of contagious disease. Because infectious disease was perhaps the most...