1950's Medicine and Health | "Statistics of Health"

Essay, Tables

By: James M. Hundley

Date: 1959

Source: Hundley, James M. "Statistics of Health." Food: The Yearbook of Agriculture, 1959. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1959.

About the Author: James M. Hundley joined the Public Health Service as a physician in 1940, focusing after 1943 on research in human nutrition. In 1953, he became head of the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Nutrition at the National Institutes of Health.

Introduction

Infectious diseases have plagued humans since antiquity. Among the most virulent pandemics were the Black Death that carried off as much as half of Europe's population between 1347 and 1351 and the influenza outbreak that killed 20 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919.

The development of vaccines and antibiotics reduced the spread of diseases. Vaccines predate antibiotics. A vaccine is a dead or weakened strain of a...