|
|
|
"A Whole Community Working Together": Pearl Kendrick, Grace Eldering, and the Grand Rapids Pertussis Trials, 1932–1939
by
Carolyn G. Shapiro-Shapin
|
The Michigan State Medical Society reported in 1930 that "whooping cough is a very fatal disease for young children and unfortunately it is difficult to make parents understand that they must protect their children.... There is little that can be done to control its spread except to avoid the opportunity for infection."1 Throughout the 1920s, whooping cough, also known as pertussis, took more young lives annually than did the better-known childhood scourges of diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, and tuberculosis; on average six thousand American children succumbed to whooping cough each year during this decade.2 In 1932 Michigan Department of Health bacteriologists Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering forged a mutually beneficial partnership with the community of Grand Rapids that would, within four years, produce a viable whooping-cough vaccine.3 This collaboration, which would endure though the 1940s, made it possible for Kendrick and Eldering to study the pertussis bacillus, develop a potent pertussis vaccine, and conduct large-scale, controlled field trials that demonstrated the vaccine's effectiveness. |
1
|
|
By the time Kendrick and Eldering began developing and testing their pertussis vaccine, diverse Progressive-Era reformers had been working for decades to protect the health of the nation's citizens. They had employed a wide range of strategies, including urban sanitation, bacterial and chemical analyses of water and milk, health education, and inspection of immigrants for communicable diseases. Kendrick and Eldering's work on pertussis built on three public health trends that have received much attention from historians: the development of maternal and child health programs in the United States and around the world, the emergence of the science of bacteriology, and the growth of research on biological products. In an era when children were viewed as both national and natural resources for the nation's growing role on the world stage, the health and welfare of America's youngest citizens began to receive heightened attention from the public health community.4 New public health advances in bacteriology provided local communities and state boards of health with a myriad of options for reducing infant, childhood, maternal, and general mortality.5 The development of biological products, including Kendrick and Eldering's vaccine, would also play a major role in improving the nation's health.6 |
2
|
|
State and local health departments faced difficult funding decisions as the Great Depression forced them to stretch falling revenues in order to meet the increased public health challenges that typically accompany high unemployment and low incomes.7 It was during these trying economic times that Kendrick and Eldering motivated the health-conscious Grand Rapids community not only to adopt extant vaccines, but also to actively sponsor and participate in innovative public health research.8 The scientists' creative outreach work and their successful efforts to raise funds by combining local public and private donations; state funds; locally allocated federal monies; and, later, direct federal grants, reveal the extent to which local support was vital to research in the years before the large-scale infusion of federal research dollars during the Second World War. |
. . . |
There are about 11263 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
