Jules Schevitz (1897–1922): Boy Wonder From Brooklyn

Abstract

JULES SCHEVITZ WAS A brilliant young man who died at the age of 24, at the very beginning of a most promising career. At the age of 20, the young man was appointed general secretary of the Oklahoma Public Health Association where, as described in the extract, he proceeded to build a remarkably effective public health and antituberculosis program. Immediately after his arrival in Oklahoma, he was given the task of selling tuberculosis seals—then a significant way of raising money for the campaign against tuberculosis. Schevitz raised over $40 000—an increase of 2000% over the amount that had been raised in the previous year.1 Schevitz appointed executive committees of the Association first in larger towns, then in rural areas across the state. He selected trained tuberculosis nurses and visiting nurses from across the United States and put them to work. Schevitz established tuberculosis clinics across Oklahoma, initiated infant and child welfare work, and introduced school nursing into the school system. He gave special attention to the African American and American Indian populations and to soldiers being discharged from the armed services. Schevitz conducted the first statewide survey of urban health conditions, and he printed and distributed thousands of public health pamphlets on infant and child care, tuberculosis, and communicable diseases.2 He also succeeded in convincing the Oklahoma legislature to build and maintain three tuberculosis sanatoria. Schevitz encouraged local newspapers to print articles about his public health campaigns, edited and distributed a popular monthly bulletin, and also served as contributing editor to the Nation's Health. In this extract from an article published in an early issue of the American Journal of Public Health, he explains how he effectively used the techniques of advertising to “sell” his public health campaigns. Within 4 years, he was able to transform Oklahoma into one of the leading states in public health progress. Schevitz was born in Brooklyn and educated at public schools and at City College, New York, where he specialized in biological sciences and public health. While still in college, he had developed pulmonary tuberculosis and then spent a year in the Trudeau sanatorium under the care of Edward Livingston Trudeau, the pioneer in the sanatorium treatment of tuberculosis. Much impressed by Trudeau, Schevitz spent the following summer conducting a tuberculosis survey of New Jersey.3 Sadly, the disease to which he would devote so much time and energy would also be the cause of his very premature death.