1921 | Medicine
Medicine
The U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) has its beginnings in an executive order by President Harding that establishes a Veterans Bureau. Veterans of the Great War have been receiving medical care and examinations for pensions or compensation from various hospitals, but an inspection by the Bureau's first director reveals "absolutely deplorable" conditions in "many cantonments." Charles R. Forbes has been director of the War Risk Insurance Bureau; the president's personal physician Charles E. Sawyer tells him that all patients must be housed together, including those with neuro-psychiatric problems and tuberculosis as well as general medical and surgical cases, but Forbes will opt for segregation in the facilities now being built under a massive hospital construction program (see 1923).
Heart disease becomes the leading cause of death in America after 10 years of jockeying for the lead with tuberculosis. Coronary disease accounts for 14 percent of U.S. deaths and the figure will increase to 39 percent in the next 50 years.
The Council of the American Medical Association refuses to endorse an American Medical Association (AMA) resolution proposed in 1917 that would oppose use of alcohol as a beverage and would discourage its use as a therapeutic agent. More than 15,000 physicians and 57,000 druggists and drug manufacturers applied for licenses to prescribe and sell liquor in the first 6 months after passage of the Volstead Act in 1919 and by 1928 physicians will be making an estimated $40 million per year by writing prescriptions for whiskey.
Psychodiagnostics by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach, 36, introduces the Rorschach test. Based on subjects' reactions to inkblots, the test will be used to probe the unconscious.
Viennese child psychologist Melanie Klein (née Reizes), 39, presents her first paper, "The Development of a Child," before the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society. She will work on techniques for analyzing children using a psychoanalytic setting similar to that employed by Freud for adults, providing a child with a box of toys on the assumption that the child will express herself or himself more fully in play than in words.
Poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) strikes former assistant secretary of the navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt, now 39, in August at his vacation home on Campobello Island, New Brunswick. His 36-year-old wife, Eleanor, loyally and compassionately nurses FDR in his illness, setting aside the hurt and resentment caused by his infidelity; since he will no longer be able to walk, she will hereafter serve many times as his emissary.
Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages are introduced by Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, N.J. The company will install machines in 1924 for mass-producing Band-Aids in precut three-inch by 3/4-inch sizes, and it will distribute them to Boy Scout troops nationwide. J&J will diversify its product line in this decade to offer items such as Johnson's Baby Cream.