Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service

Abstract

Newspapers, television, and other media report disease outbreaks and therapeutic advances in medicine promptly and dramatically but pay little attention to routine public health activities that prevent disease and epidemics. In<i>Plagues and Politics</i>, Dr Fitzhugh Mullan, a US Public Health Service commissioned officer whose grandfather was also in the Service, contributes to correcting this imbalance with a history of the Service since its Revolutionary War beginnings as a source of medical care for merchant mariners. The book was prepared at the invitation of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who has written a personal and thoughtful foreword. "History should be a good story" begins Mullan, and he makes it one. His task is formidable, for he not only traces the broad lines of Public Health Service history but also follows some specific issues such as the story of fluoridation of public water supplies and the swine flu vaccination campaign.